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…
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.…
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…
Visitors to the Agritech Expo Zambia 2018 at Chisamba in Central Province entered a declared foot and mouth disease (FMD) zone en route to the expo recently. The affected areas of Chisama and Chibombo had 5 000 recorded cases of FMD by the 16 April, according to The Times of…
