Participatory Identification of Breeding Objectives and Selection Criteria for Begaria Cattle Breed

Tesfalem Aseged (), Tesfaye Getachew and Sandip Banerjee
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Tesfalem Aseged: Ethiopian Biodiversity Institute, Addis Ababa P.O. Box 30726, Ethiopia
Tesfaye Getachew: International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas, Addis Ababa P.O. Box 5689, Ethiopia
Sandip Banerjee: School of Smart Agriculture, Adamas University, Kolkat 700126, India

Sustainability, 2022, vol. 14, issue 19, 1-16

Abstract: The objectives of this study were to identify the breeding objectives of Begaria cattle keepers. A semi-structured questionnaire, live animal ranking, and focus group discussions were employed to identify the breeding objectives of the farmers. The study was conducted on a total of 75 conveniently sampled households. Among the total cattle population of the sampled households, 506 heads of cattle (252 male and 254 female animals) were ranked as first best, second best, third best, and/or the worst animals. Owners were asked to choose the first best, second best, third best, and worst animals from their herd for both sexes. Reasons for ranking, important morphometric measurements, and (re)production performance of the ranked animal were taken. The R Commander package version 2.6-0 was used to analyze qualitative data and analysis of variance in R software was used to analyze quantitative data. Reasons for ranking of cows in the study area were milk yield (39.14%), calving interval (15.14), temperament (12), and body size (10.86), whereas for bulls, reasons were body size (30.39%), growth (30.66), body condition score (16.85), and color (15.19). Survival rate (Sur), calving interval (CI), milk yield (MY), and lactation milk yield (LMY) for the cows and body condition score (BCS), weaning age (WA), yearling weight (YW), and weaning weight (WW) for the bulls were significantly different ( p < 0.05) mainly between the first- and last-ranked animals. Farmers were willing to pay up to Ethiopian birr (ETB) 11,500, 10,700, 10,400, and 9500 on average for first-, second-, and third-ranked breeding females and up to ETB 6300, 5800, 5200, and 4500 for breeding males. Lactation milk yield, calving interval, mothering ability, growth rate, and age at first calving were determined as breeding objective traits of the community. with suggested selection criteria of lactation milk yield, calving interval, survival rate, yearling weight, and age at first calving, respectively.

Keywords: objective traits; own herd ranking; selection criteria; willingness to pay (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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