Milk is composed of approximately 87.2% water, 3.7% fats, 3.5% protein, 4.9% lactose 0.7% ash and has a pH 6.8. Milk is universally recognized as a complete diet due to its essential nutritional components.Milk is a valuable source of protein, fat, carbohydrates, vitamins and minerals.Milk protein contains all the nine essential amino acids required by humans, especially young ones, for growth and development. The key factor for quality dairy products is to avoid contamination of the raw milk and milk products. Failure to maintain adequate sanitation practices has been contribute to contamination of milk with undesirable or pathogenic micro-organisms or chemical or physical hazards. Because quality of dairy products are easily affected due to different factors of which performance of milking procedures and cleanness of the milking utensils and equipment are the major one. The key sources of contamination are: faeces, from soiled animals, especially teats, udders and tails; bacteria, from poor milking practices, soiled hands, inadequately cleaned and disinfected equipment (including bulk milk tanks), and failure to clean and disinfect teats prior to milking; failure to detect abnormal milk (mastitis pathogens, blood and clots); foreign bodies, especially from perished components in milking machines and bulk tanks, dust, bedding materials, dung, insects and animal hair; chemicals, metals, organics, etc., from veterinary product residues, cleaning chemicals and use of non-food grade equipment.The common predisposing factors of milk contamination by microorganisms are milking environment, cows, milking personnel, milking equipment, milk transportation and water. On the next milking, the cow is given its calf to suckle and milking follows without cleaning the teats. Saliva from the calf mouth and unwashed teats increase bacterial counts in the milk causing spoilage. Failure to thoroughly clean and dry the udder and teats is a common source of Coliforms in milk. Generally, the milk hygiene practice has interests in preventing the transmission milkborn zoonotic diseases, preventing the transmission of communicable diseases of man through milk, preventing diseases or physical defects that may arise from malnutrition and improving the nutritional status of man in general and of infants, children, and mother in particular. Therefore, as a recommendation, keeping hygienic milk production practices at household level and farm is important for human health.
In many parts of the world, production of sufficient green fodder and grain to feed the livestock population has become a big challenge. This is due to limited land allocation, fertilizer and manure requirements for cultivation, lack of irrigation facilities and natural calamity. To overcome this problem, hydroponics fodder production technology is an emerging as alternative to grow sufficient quality fodder and some parts of concentrate in livestock farms. Hydroponic fodder production is a method of fodder production, in which fodder seeds are germinated into a high quality, highly nutritious, disease free animal food in a hygienic environment. It is also more palatable and digestible and can be grown in low cost devices with locally home grown grains. Moreover, it is advantageous in terms of nutritional benefit and economic value, constant food supply year-round, marginal land use, reduced labour requirement and natural feed for animals. However, there is a big gap and no adequate compiled information that clearly indicates the importance of hydroponics fodder production for sustainable livestock production against climate change. Therefore, it is important to review the aspect thoroughly and bring minor details into focus to have better understanding of hydroponics fodder production for sustainable livestock production against climate change.
The study was aimed with to study dairy cattle husbandry practices and coping strategies against feed scarcity in selected districts of Buno Bedele zone, south western Ethiopia. Both purposive and simple random sampling techniques were used to select kebeles and household respondents. For this study, a total of 384 households were used for an interview. Of the total land size occupied by the respondents, higher proportions (5.07±2.739) were used for communal grazing land followed by land for cereal production (2.86±1.495); land for coffee (1.02±0.965) and land for forest land (0.85±0.585). As the current result indicated majority (42.9%) of the households were used communal natural pasture as the main feed source, especially during the wet seasons; and road and river side and aftermath grazing (15.6%) were also used as feed resource in the study areas. As compared with tethering during wet grazing (27.8%), free grazing (72.12%) remains the major and dominant feeding system practiced in the study areas. In the study area grain leftover (27.6%) were the major supplementary feeds followed by and mill by products (20.3%) and house wastes, atela and common salt (19.01%). River (72.13%), pip water (22.1%) and deep water (5.73%) were the major drinking water in the study areas. Of the total respondents, majority (72.65%) of them housed their dairy cows in open kraal followed by adjoin house (22.92%). As the current study indicated Trypanosomiasis, Mastitis, Foot and mouth disease (FMD) were the commonly occurred diseases of dairy cattle reported by 23.44%, 19.8% and 17.7%, respectively. Changing feed recourse based on availability and cost (26.3%), rent land and grows fodder (23.7%) and reducing herd size (21.4%) were the available copying strategy against feed scarcity, respectively in the study areas.
The increase of milk production has been accompanied by increasing incidence of health problems, declining ability to reproduce and declining the fertility of modern dairy cows. High producing dairy cows need to mobilize body reserve to be able to sustain their milk production. During early lactation, there were elevated demand for energy for more milk production, but a lag in feed intake created negative energy balance. Until energy intake assures the requirements, dairy cows, especially high producing breeds, enter a state of negative energy balance (NEB) that leads to economic losses through decreased milk production, decreased reproductive performance and increased risks of disease incidences. Increased energy intake, decreased dry period length and improved fertility are among the universal approach in combating the negative effect of negative energy balance in dairy industry.
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