Abstract:
The study was conducted in Bedano district, East Hararghe Zone of Oromia Region, Ethiopia. To assess milk production, reproduction, handling, marketing system and analyze milk composition of local cows at smallholder farmers’. The study had two parts: survey and monitoring. For survey study Multi-stage stratified sampling technique was employed to select targets. The number of PAs selected from rural, 3 PAs (About 10% of these PAs) was selected by using purposive sampling and for peri-urban about 50% of this PAs was selected. Respondent were selected using proportional to size about 12% of the total households was selected randomly from a list of farmers registered as milk producers of the respective kebeles were 25, 35,30 and 30 respondents for Chafe Balina, Lenca, Rasa jeneta and Bedano zuriya, respectively. A total of 120 households were individually interviewed. For determination of chemical composition 18 milk sample was used purposively. Majority of milk animals in the study area are indigenous breeds. The major sources of feed are natural grazing, crop residues and elephant grass. About 68.3% of sampled households keep their cattle within family house while 32.7% keep in separate house. The dominant (92.5%) form of pre-weaning milk suckling was partial feeding and the rest one is bucket feeding. The overall average age at first service, age at first calving, calving interval and lactation length was 40.67±1.96, 50.42±2.38, 16.50±2.63 and 8.63±1.01 months, respectively, for local cows, and 23.26±1.42, 33.24±1.36, 14.72±1.34 and 9.95±0.39 months, respectively, for crossbred cows across both production systems. Although both controlled and free mating were practiced, about 58.3%, 12.5% and 29.2% use bull service, artificial insemination and combination of both, respectively. Mastitis, anthrax, bovine pasteurolosis, blackleg, blotting and skin diseases were the major diseases in the area. The estimated mean milk yield/head/day was 1.94 0.60 liter and 5.04 1.05 liter for local and cross breed cows, respectively. Majority of the households (98%) indicated that cows are milked twice during both wet and dry season. All respondents (100%) reported that they wash hands and milk vessels before milking cows. Majority of the respondents (87%) use gourd for milking. Olea Africana in all respondents (100%) are used plant species for smoking milk vessels in the area. Dairy products sold in marketing through informal and there are two milk marketing systems traditional groups (locally kiroo ananni) and individual seller. The price of cow milk and butter during wet and dry season is 12.8 Birr/liter, 25.7 Birr/liter, 217.4 Birr/kg and 270.9 Birr/kg, respectively. The monitoring results showed that daily milk yield for local cows were 2.36±0.84, 2.82±1.01and 0.89±0.58liters and 2.36±0.84, 2.82±1.01and 0.89±0.58 liters for early, mid, and late lactation, respectively for rural and peri urban and overall mean production was 1.75±0.49L/day. The overall mean fat, protein, total solids, ash and solids-not-fat (SNF) contents of local cows’ were 4.92, 3.24, 13.95, 0.75 and 8.89 percent, respectively. In general, this study showed that the major constraints to milk production in the study area are shortage of land, feed shortage, disease prevalence, inadequate extension service, inadequate artificial insemination, lack of dairy cooperative and milk marketing system. It can be concluded from this study that shortage of feed, lack of adequate health education, sanitary measures and milk marketing groups (dairy cooperative) was observed to affect the return from sale of fresh milk.