Sciences de la volaille, de la pêche et de la faune
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Characterization of Husbandry Practices of Indigenous Goat Populations in South Gondar Zone, Ethiopia

Birara Tade*, Aberra Melesse, Simret Betsha

This study was conducted to describe the husbandry practice of indigenous goat populations in South Gondar. To this effect, husbandry practices of indigenous goat population were taken from 153 households (138 males and 15 females) of both sexes selected randomly drawn from three districts (Farta, Fogera and Libokemkem). The districts were selected multi-stage purposive sampling technique and data were gathered through semistructured questionnaire, focus group discussions, field observations analysis using SPSS (version. 20). The results indicates that natural pasture was ranked as first feed resource for goat in both dry and wet seasons for the studied districts those communal grazing land might be leading to mate of unrelated goats especially in large flock size and reduce inbreeding. About 79.7% of the respondent housed their goats separately from other animals. Majority of respondent practices castration of buck in wet season by modern castration method (burdizzo). The categories of goats used for fattening were castrated (54.8%), whereas female goats were only fattened when they get older. The respondents culled their goats at average age of 6.13 years for bucks and 7.95 years for does. The most reasons of culling male goats were age, poor physical condition, frequent illness and poor libido. The mean marketing age for goats in the study area was 9.46 months for young bucks and 10.8 months for young does. All respondents had accesses to get veterinary service in each kebeles. The major diseases identified by the interviewed respondents were Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD), foot root, anthrax, pasteurellosis, sheep and goat pox, internal and external parasites, and lung warm. Most of the time providing vaccination to prevalence disease occurred during the onset and offset of rain. The major constraints of goat were disease occurrences and feed shortage. In conclusion goat management practiced in the study area was traditional, kept primarily for income source. Therefore, improving husbandry practices applying appropriate disease prevention methods and applying strategic forage development and feeding practices.