What sheep eat has a great impact on their condition and performance. These basic feeding principles can help you improve their nutritional status. Feed is the single biggest budgetary item associated with raising ruminants, such as sheep. It usually accounts for at least 60% of the total production costs in…
Question: I would like to learn how to make silage to feed my animals. Can you help, please? Making silage requires a lot of labour and attention, but if it is tackled with care, a short period of hard work can prove to be worthwhile all year long. Silage can…
Question: What are the nutritional requirements for raising kids and lambs? Nutrition starts with the mother. If ewes or does are poorly fed while pregnant, the offspring won’t grow well inside the mother. They’ll be small, weak and thin at birth and liable to die from factors such as cold, wind,…
Cereal by-products will play an increasing role in building sustainable livestock futures across the developing world, says the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI). The aim is to treat cereals like straw from fine grain crops such as rice, wheat and teff and stover from coarse grain plants such as maize,…
The International Center for Agricultural Research in Dry Areas (ICARDA) has reported progress in its Red Meat Value Chain project. This project seeks to help Tunisian livestock farmers gain stockfeed self-sufficiency, while teaching drought adaptation techniques to crop farmers. In a project update statement, ICARDA said 42 farmers have involved…
Farmers, it is always good to learn from how other farmers are doing it, like this farmer who farms meat chickens. Other farmers are not necessarily right in the way they are doing their business, but they are doing it the way that work best for them, and that is…
Producers often ask why some flocks perform exceptionally well, while others do not, under the same conditions. A well-known quotation goes: “You are the master of your own destiny”. If applied to broiler farmers, this implies that, with correct management and a suitable vaccination programme, broiler performance will be as…
The South African firm Skretting has invested €4.5 million to help produce fish feed in Zambia. This while government is calling for more private sector investment in stock manufacturing to support the growing aquaculture sector. General manager Abraham Swanepoel said the construction of the plant at Siavonga in Southern Province…
Invented in the Netherlands, the Feed Calculator is a new piece of technology available for Zambian farmers who want to mitigate high input costs. This smart phone application enables farmers to produce chicken feed which meets industry standards, using local ingredients. “Feed Calculator was designed to offer guidelines to poultry…
Farmers are known for their ability to give old diesel tanks many new guises in a variety of innovative ways. Mr Hannes Esterhuyse has done just that, making water troughs using rings cut from an old diesel tank. Hannes, a sheep farmer in the South African Karoo-desert, has designed and…
Eddie Steenkamp who farms sheep, near Hopefield in South Africa, needed a feeding system that could be operated without help over weekends. He prefers to use pelleted, nutritionally balanced feed to finish sheep and get them ready for the market. “The most practical thing was to feed pellets from self-feeders.…
Supplements in sheep and goat diets help to boost low quality roughage in available grazing, correct nutrient deficiencies and improve flock production. Weigh up the options, look at your available forage and make a sound decision that benefits your flock and consequently your pocket. There is demand, as we have…
“Insects, like fly larvae, are also cost effective and produce a sustainable, high value product with no disadvantages en risks that we could identify so far." Although a great deal of money has been spent on getting rid of insects, they have been used as food for thousands of years.…
The herd of bushbuck of Mr. Werner Nel of Brits never go hungry. As he says: Their stomachs should be full, 24 hours a day. But in the summer sowing areas, winter grass isn’t worth much when it comes to nutrition and then licks or additional feed needs to be…
Always on the lookout for ways to limit expenses, to simplify labour and to run his friend's farm profitably, Gawie Stoltz has perfected a method of turning old tyres inside out and repurposing them as feeding troughs. He also devised a smart way to clean livestock drinking troughs. A feeding…
With this feeder plan, mr. CA van Niekerk can easily creep feed up to 26 lambs. CA, from the Northern Cape in South Africa, came up with this clever plan to easily and effectively feed his lambs without worrying about the ewes stealing the lambs’ feed. He used blue PVC pipes…
Small-scale farmers own most of Zambia’s cattle but produce only 50% of the country’s milk. Given the value of milk as a food, this seems a pity when it is quite possible to improve milk production, without major capital injections, through small tweaks to management with significant outcomes. The Zambian…
Always on the lookout for ways to limit expenses, to simplify labour and to run his friend's farm profitably, Gawie Stoltz has perfected a method of turning old tyres inside out and repurposing them as feeding troughs. He also devised a smart way to clean livestock drinking troughs. A feeding…
This farmer built a machine to chop up invasive bush, and to manufacture feed pellets for game and livestock right there in the bush. The price quoted in the video excludes transport and duties to Zambia or any other country outside South Africa. https://youtu.be/Q9JOP84sTR8
