adminIt is a commonly agreed fact that most smallholder communal livestock farmers need to be assisted so that they can look after their herd as a business enterprise. One common challenge that is affecting most smallholder livestock farmers is the inability to make a decision to sell even if minimum logic dictates that an animal or two have to be sold for one production reason or another.
Coupled with this, is the inability to choose the appropriate animal(s) to sell. This week we therefore wish to assist an average communal farmer to make a decision on which animal to sell. This starts with understanding your herd composition not only the different classes but how each class adds value to the enterprise.
This should also be analysed in relationship with climate change and range management issues. There are basically two broad reasons why a farmer would sell his stock, that is for culling purposes, especially with reference to non-productive animals. These are animals which could be too old, carriers of diseases such as Brucellosis, animals with defects such as damaged teats or dead udder, infertile animals or even temperamental ones which are very difficult to manage.
Secondly, farmers sell certain classes of animals because they fall within the bracket of income sources. These are your steers, oxen and heifers depending on the size of the herd of that particular farmer. The top income earner for a beef production enterprise is the steers. Smallholder farmers should learn to castrate the male offspring in their herds and sell off these at the right age. While the right age ranges from one-and-a-half to two years, the breed factor also comes into play with indigenous breeds needing an additional year to grow the right body size for disposal.
It is inappropriate and poor practice for a livestock farmer to keep a bunch of steers just so that they can grow into oxen for draught power and you go around boasting that you have eight oxen for draught power. You are wasting your money especially against a background of droughts and repeated poor harvests coupled with low grain prices and a Grain Marketing Board whose willingness to timeously pay for farmers’ produce is in great suspicion. Why waste time using eight oxen for ploughing just so you can harvest five bags after seven months of toiling in the fields! Why not sell one steer at $600 and buy two tonnes of maize you need to feed your family for the whole year! In fact why do you need eight oxen in drought prone areas?
It’s not rocket science but merely elementary logic. Farmers also should learn to sell off their cows at right ages. It is both cruel and a poor management practice to keep animals until the mouth is totally empty with not even a single tooth. These are the animals that are easily susceptible to drought conditions mainly because their feed intake is grossly reduced by its inability to bite as a result of not having teeth. During the dry season animals tend to browse a lot because of unavailability of grass. How can it browse if it has not even one tooth in its mouth?
Heifers in your herd are also an important income source for the beef production enterprise. If your herd composition is such that you have more heifers than you need, you can sell the excess. You choose the best and use them as replacement heifers for the cull cows that you intend to sell. It is important to note that a heifer which is probably one-and-a-half to two years old will give you better money than most of your oxen and old cows. The value of a heifer is not in meat but in production. That is why a heifer will sell at $3 per kg live weight basis while your ox will struggle to give you $1,10 per kg live weight price.
The thesis of this instalment is that smallholder farmers should understand their herd compositions and what implications that has on their decision to sell. Selling an animal is not just an income generating decision; it’s an animal husbandry management decision. So next time you look at your steers please see your money not potential draught power!
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