Improving Animal Productivity: Breeding, Dipping & Key Factors

Breeding Efficiency in Livestock

Breeding efficiency in livestock refers to the animal's ability to produce offspring early and regularly for a long period. Livestock with good breeding efficiency exhibits characteristics such as a short calving interval, high conception rate per service, early conception at 18 months of age, more animals in the herd calving in a year, regular calving, and successive pregnancies.

These traits contribute to the animal's productivity and profitability by maximizing the number of offspring produced and reducing the time between generations. Therefore, improving breeding efficiency is crucial for livestock farmers who seek to optimize their production and economic returns.

Breeding efficiency in livestock is influenced by several factors, including libido, mating ability, serving capacity, and social dominance. The evaluation of these factors is typically done by observing the herd bull during the breeding season.

Reproductive efficiency is a crucial economic trait in dairy cattle. Inefficiency in reproduction leads to longer calving intervals, higher involuntary culling rates, reduced milk production, delayed genetic progress, and other problems that result in significant economic losses.

How Do You Maintain Breeding Efficiency?

The breeding efficiency can be greatly enhanced by lowering the interval between successive pregnancies. The wise general policy is to breed for the first time at an early age and to rebreed at almost the earliest opportunity after each pregnancy. In this way, the lifetime efficiency is increased.

What Causes Low Breeding Efficiency?

A low rate of fertilization and a high rate of embryonic mortality are the major factors causing the low seasonal breeding efficiency associated with high ambient temperature and humidity in lactating dairy cows.

How to Improve Breeding Efficiency in Livestock?

By proper feeding of animals, carrying out pregnancy diagnosis, observing a rest period of 60 days, and maintaining the correct ratio of male animals to female animals. Animals should be treated for breeding diseases.

Proper observance of heat signs and serving animals on the heat early enough. Using correct techniques of insemination, normal sperm during insemination, regularly using veterinary attention, and keeping accurate breeding records. 

Dipping in Livestock

Dipping refers to the immersion of cattle in solutions of various chemical preparations for the purpose of destroying parasites that infest their skin.

Dipping gives protection against scabs for longer than 17 days, thus allowing for complete elimination in closed flocks; Dipping is the only way to control scabs, ticks, lice, blowflies, and keds with one product.

How do You Make a Dip?

The dip tank should be constructed on slightly elevated ground near a water source and easily accessible by both cattle and operators. The collection pen should be well-drained and firmly established.

Additionally, the entrance race should be made of concrete and narrow enough to allow only one animal at a time.

Methods of dipping cattle, sheep, and goats include plunge dips, spray races, topical treatments (pour-ons), hand spraying, hand dressing, belly baths (for sheep and goats), and injectable parasiticides.

How to Ensure Effectiveness While Dipping Livestock?

Maintain the dipping routine, avoid dipping on a rainy day, and ensure that the roof is leak-proof and that the acaricide is thoroughly mixed before dipping.

Open the drainage pipe after dipping, close the drainage pipe during dipping, and replenish the dip wash regularly.

Reduce the amount of dirt and dung carried by the animals' feet to the dip tanks. This is done to reduce contamination of the dip wash. Then add adequate water to the footbath, use a caricide that has not expired, and close the return pipe after dipping, or open the return pipe during dipping.

Qualities of a Good Stockman

A stockman is a person who looks after livestock. The attributes of a good stockman include an affinity and empathy with livestock, patience, and keen observational skills, amongst others. Knowledge of animal husbandry based on animal science is beneficial, but it is essential that this is honed by practical experience.

A good stockman should be kind to animals and know daily and monthly routine operations very well. For example, when to spray/dip cattle against ticks, when to weigh animals, more so calves after birth, and when to drench (de-worm) farm animals.

He should work out and keep a routine, as abrupt changes always result in a drop in milk production. He should ensure his grazing paddocks do not have foreign material that can be injurious to livestock, for example, pieces of metal, poisonous weeds, or shaped pieces of wood sticking out of the ground.

A good stockman should be able to recognize symptoms of ill health, effects of the heat on animals, signs of abortion, or signs of approaching parturition, and should be able to take appropriate measures in each case mentioned above and always keep up-to-date records. These could be records of breeding, production, or accounts.

Factors That Affect Cattle Production

Diseases

Many diseases attack livestock. The climate, particularly rainfall and high temperatures, is conducive to the rapid multiplication of parasites and vectors, which cause and spread diseases, respectively.

Tick-borne diseases are enzootic in most parts of the world. These diseases include East Coast Fever, heartwater, red water, and anaplasmosis (gall water disease).

Of these, East Coast Fever causes heavy losses in the exotic breed of cattle, especially in calves, unless they are treated and sprayed with an acaricide frequently.

Diseases such as foot and mouth disease, anthrax, black quarter, and bovine pleural pneumonia sometimes attack cattle and lead to considerable losses.

Animals should be inoculated against these diseases. Tsetse flies (Glossina species), the vectors of a trypanosome that causes nagana in cattle and sleeping sickness in human beings, make cattle-keeping practically impossible in some areas, for example, in the thick forest areas of the fertile crescent of Lake Victoria in Uganda and areas bordering Lake Tanganyika and Lake Victoria in Tanzania. Biting flies of the genus Stomoxys have been found to transmit nagana.

Breeding

Animals are not usually mated at the right time. In many cases, animals mate when they are very young, which affects their performance later in life. Inbreeding is common. This leads to low production because some of the desirable traits are lost as inbreeding progresses.

Good animal husbandry involves, among other things, the selection of good animals according to their performance, hybridization (crossing) of the ones selected, and then maintaining only those with desirable traits, that is to say, traits of good commercial importance.

Some of the desirable traits to promote during selective breeding are fertility, birth weight, growth rate, carcass weight (especially for beef animals), longevity during lactation, and marbling ability.

Record Keeping

Very few farmers keep good records in Africa. Breeding, accounts, and production records would reveal the weaknesses of their stock-raising and help them to cull unproductive animals.

Housing

The housing provided for cattle in Africa often leaves much to be desired. It is common to find cattle in kraals (bomas) full of mud and dung. Houses, preferably with concrete floors, are ideal for calves as they are easy to clean.

Housing should afford the following: comfort, ample space, good ventilation, and illumination, as well as protection against preying animals.

Calf rearing

In most cases, management and nutrition are poor. Calves are not fed well, and diseases such as East Coast Fever and calf scours cause considerable mortality.

Feeding and Provision of Mineral Licks

Poor feeding is one of the main reasons why cattle in Africa do not produce much milk and beef. In most cases, pastures are unimproved, and leys with recommended grass/legume species are rare to find.

Most cattle keepers depend on communal grazing, often in swamp fringes where the nutritional level of the pasture is very low. Further, animals travel long distances in search of pastures and water, and despite the distances, they do not get enough herbage.

Fewer animals to ensure enough herbage and night paddocking to encourage maximum feeding are good managerial practices that increase production. Unfortunately, night paddocking is not much practiced in Africa, and cattle are kept in kraals at night.

Shade in Pastures

Pastures should have trees or thatched shelters where cattle can seek shelter when it is hot, especially in the middle of the day. This is of great importance when exotic animals are kept on the farm.

Thermo-regulative mechanisms of cattle begin to fail when ambient temperatures rise above 35°C in the case of indigenous cattle and 27°C in the case of temperate breeds.

Therefore, shade provided by trees such as the Ficus or grass-thatched structures is necessary for this purpose. It should be noted that under communal grazing, this might not be a problem because cattle get shelter from trees that grow naturally.

Deworming (Drenching)

Internal parasites such as liver flukes, roundworms, and tapeworms cause serious losses among cattle, mainly calves.

Fly control

In addition to tsetse flies, biting flies such as Stomoxys species cause much damage to cattle by sucking blood.

Provision of water

Clean, cool water free of parasites is necessary for all types of livestock. Water requirements depend on the size of the animal, the type of production, and the season of the year.

For example, a 300 kg Zebu cow requires 11 to 14 liters of water during the rainy season and 20 to 23 liters during the dry season. A 450 kg exotic cow requires more than 45 liters per day, plus 3 to 4 liters for every liter of milk produced.

Generally, cattle are not given enough water to drink, and the little they get is usually contaminated with mud or trash.

Social Aspects

Pastoralist communities, such as the Karamajong and the Bahima in Uganda, the Turkana, the Borana (Galla), the Maasai, and the Somali, regard cattle as a measure of wealth.

Additionally, they depend on cattle for paying the bride price and for their staple diet of milk and blood. The latter is drawn from the jugular vein of a live animal. To them, the more cattle one has, the better.

However, our target is quality. Therefore, there is a tendency for them to keep many bony and unproductive animals.

Conclusion

In conclusion, breeding efficiency is a vital factor for livestock farmers aiming to optimize production and economic returns. By focusing on traits such as a short calving interval, high conception rate, and early conception, farmers can maximize the number of offspring and reduce the time between generations. Factors like libido, mating ability, serving capacity, and social dominance influence breeding efficiency and can be evaluated through the observation of herd bulls during the breeding season.

To maintain breeding efficiency, it is important to breed animals at an early age and rebreed them soon after each pregnancy. Lowering the interval between successive pregnancies increases lifetime efficiency. However, low breeding efficiency can be caused by factors such as low fertilization rates and high embryonic mortality, which are associated with environmental conditions like high ambient temperature and humidity.

Improving breeding efficiency requires proper feeding, pregnancy diagnosis, rest periods, appropriate male-to-female ratios, treatment of breeding diseases, accurate record-keeping, and the use of correct breeding techniques. By implementing these strategies, livestock farmers can enhance breeding efficiency and promote the overall productivity and profitability of their operations.