Farmer's Diary: Feeding animals to enhance yields

Just like humans, animals too need good nutrition. However a farmer feeds an animal not only to keep it in good health but also to increase milk production, weight gain and produce healthy young ones, or the amount of animal manure to be obtained. A wise farmer constantly considers reducing costs in order to maximise profits by, say, producing his own feeds instead of always buying them from farmers’ shops. Feeds constitute over 70 per cent of the total cost of production. The animal must eat the right quantity and quality of food and the farmer should have an idea which feeds contain which nutrients. People whose animals graze freely in the fields should not only continually enhance the quality of the pasture by planting the right grasses as advised by the agriculture extension service providers but also provide supplementary feeding to the animals when they come home. The farmers who practice zero grazing must ensure that the animals get the feeds needed for providing vitamins, energy, protein, minerals and other required nutrients so that ultimately the enterprise is financially paying and family food security is sustained.

Dairy farmers in the districts of Kalungu, Lwengo and Masaka have in the recent months been introduced to lick blocks, also known as multi-nutrient mineral blocks, containing energy, protein, vitamins, minerals and other nutrients intended to be fed to the animals as a supplement and to increase milk production. Working with farmers’ groups, Dr Jolly Kabirizi, a research scientist from the National Livestock Resources Research Institute (Nalirri), has taught the farmers to make the blocks. They provide the needed nutrients to cattle, goats, and sheep, especially in situations where smallholder farmers feed animals on poor quality forages and crop residues perhaps due to drought or other limitations. “The blocks are not to be fed alone but only as a supplement,” she warned the farmers attending a workshop early last month. “The purpose of the block is to improve the utilisation of roughage and not to substitute it.”

Shaped like cakes or loaves of bread, the blocks have such ingredients as molasses, urea fertiliser, maize bran, oilseed meals, clay soil or cassava flour (as a binder), mineral powder, calliandra leaf hay, chopped dry grass, dry banana or potato peels and a few other components. “The choice of ingredients will depend on their availability, nutritive value, price, ease of handling and the effect on the quality of the block,” Dr Kabirizi said.

She laboured to explain to the farmers the nutritive value of all the ingredients to the animals and warned that because the blocks contain urea fertiliser they should only be fed to ruminants (cattle, goats, and sheep) and never to ‘mono-gastric’ species (chicken, pigs, or rabbits) or to young especially pre-ruminant calves, kid goats and lambs.

It is a hands-on-experience and the farmers are made to participate in the making of the blocks as they learn.

All components are weighed out before mixing. “Different types of mixers can be used,” Kabirizi disclosed. “If adequate labour is available and only a few blocks are needed then manual mixing is possible. With three labourers, approximately 150 blocks of five kilogrammes each could be made over a period of four hours. However a manual or motorised mixer is recommended for producing over 150 blocks a day.”

There is the order of introduction of the components to be followed and it plays an important role in the mixing process. The dry ingredients (maize bran, mineral powder, maize bran, cotton seed cake, calliandra leaf hay, dry grass, dry peels and cassava flour) are mixed first. Molasses is the last ingredient to be added to the mixture. Farmers are warned on the danger of urea if it is not used properly. The final mixture, appearing like peanut butter is emptied into a set of wooden or plastic moulds to give the block the desired shape and the mould is removed for reuse like in the process of brick making. After removal of the mould the blocks are arranged on a drying rack which should never be under direct sunlight but under a shade with good ventilation. After 72 hours the blocks are dry enough to be transplanted.

Dr Kabirizi has impressed upon the smallholder farmers that most of the ingredients are readily and cheaply available on their farm plots and that the returns are a lot bigger than the estimated production cost of Shs2,000 per kilogramme block which a cow would feed on as a supplement for about five days. Dr Kabirizi’s effort is part of a research project known as Crop-Livestock Integration for Sustainable Management of Natural Resources and Building Livestock Resilience in East and Central Africa, funded by Asareca (Association for Strengthening Agricultural Research in Central and East Africa).

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