Availability of Livestock Feed Resources, Feeding Practices and Coping Strategies with Dry Season in Mareko Special Woreda District of, Central Ethiopia

Abstract

The study was aimed with to study assess the availability of Livestock Feed Resources, Feeding Practices, Coping Strategies with Dry Season and estimate the DM yield of available feed resources. Household survey was involved by interviewing a total of 138respondents which comprises three Keble’s from midland and two kebeles from the lowland agro-ecologies. The collected data from, quantitative data were analyzed by using SPSS, version22. The results revealed that the dominant feed resource in the area were crop residues (94.2. %), nature ralpastures(2.89%) , fodder trees (1.44%) and improved forage 1.45% The feed utilization practices in the area were free grazing(52.17%),Tethering (41.3%) and Stall feeding (6.53%).. The study results showed that a total of 561.533 tons of dry matter are produced for total TLU values of 673.92 but in actuality1536.5376 tons of dry matter is required for the surveyed existing stocks regardless of the nutritional content of the dry matter. Quantification estimate clearly showed that the time of abundant feeds availability in the study kebeles were only 4.38months. The findings of this study have shown that almost all the respondents experienced acute scarcity of feed supply during the dry season and use crop residues (68.84%),purchase forage (rent grazing land) 5.79%, reduction of stock 7.24%, fodder trees 13.04% and purchase concentrates 5.07%. Livestock feed production and utilization practices were mainly crop-residues-pasture-based, improvement in feeds and feeding systems is needed through introducing improved forage species, improving the quality of crop-residues, over-sowing pasture land with suitable legume forages specie and conserving feeds when abundant in supply