Cattle production: Manage the rumen for profit

Cattle are ruminants that can eat and digest inexpensive, high-fibre plant material, unavailable to non-ruminant animals, and turn it into protein and energy. Inside the rumen, one of the earth’s most densely populated microbial habitats, billions of micro-organisms transform grass into nutrients for themselves and for the host cow. During…

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Farmer profile: Growing beyond land reform in South Africa

Aggrey Mahanjana’s farm, Carnarvon Estates, is a rancher’s dream north of Queenstown in South Africa’s Eastern Cape Province. Aggrey engages with the country’s Land Reform Programme by working towards commercial-scale production. Carnarvon Estates is set in a vast landscape of rolling grasslands and the high, rocky ridges of the Stormberg.…

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East Coast fever – vaccination to combat the enemy in Africa’s cattle herds

Driving its adapted mouthparts into the skin of its host the infected brown ear tick delivers a deadly injection as it starts to feed on bovine blood. Catching a ride in the tick’s saliva, sporozoites (spores) of the protozoan parasite, Theileria parva, the agent of East Coast fever, make their…

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