The review aims to examine dairy cattle production system together with pastoral and agro-pastoral, small holder, peri urban and urban intensive dairy cattle production system, breeding practice including mating system (natural mating and Artificial Insemination), breeding objectives, reproductive and productive traits of dairy cattle in Ethiopia. In Ethiopia most farmers use natural, unplanned and uncontrolled mating system by using breeding from communal grazing and a few farmer use AI for improvement of breed and production by upgrading the genetic makeup of indigenous breed of cattle. Hence in Ethiopia, using breeding objectives in line with the effective breeding policies for both natural service and AI for sustainable and effective animal breeding practice is needed. Stakeholders, animal breeders and policy designers are to pay attention in transforming the already existing traditional breeding practices that target the productivity of dairy cattle with cautious consideration of genetic conservation of local cattle breeds.

This study was conducted in Esera district Dawuro zone Southern Ethiopia with the objectives of assessing small ruminant production system. For the study one hundred thirty eight (HHs) owning small ruminant were selected randomly and semi-structured questionnaire was used to collect data on small ruminants' production system, management, reproductive performances and availability of feed resources .The available feed resources are (a grass species, crop aftermath and 4 legumes species are the common ones). The average family size was 5.23 ± 0.195 per HH. Crop-livestock farming was the commonly used farming system (100%) with (69.1%) extensive and (30.9%) semi-intensive production system. The mean total land holding was 3.1288 ± 0.19 ha per HH and was significant (P<0.05) varied across agro-ecologies. The average sheep and goat flock size per HH was 6.08 ± 0.183 and 5.69 ± 0.236 respectively and was significantly (p<0.05) varied across agro-ecologies. The purpose of keeping small ruminants in District was for cash income, as an insurance, meat, manure and as means of wealth accumulation with index of 0.32, 0.29, 0.16, 0.13 and 0.08 respectively. Natural mating is the most widely used in their breeding practice almost (100%) in HL (High land), ML (Mid land), and LL (Low land). Grazing and browsing on natural pasture and leguminous tree species are commonly used in their feeding system. Majority (80.7%) of HHs are keeping small ruminants in their living house. The source of water used for their animals and themselves as well is from river, tap, rain and harvested water depending on the season. Internal and external parasites are the first and second ranking diseases and parasites which affects the small ruminants in the study area. For sheep, estimated average puberty age is (6.6 ± 0.12 months for male and 7.7 ± 0.16 months for female), age for first lambing (12.7 ± 0.16 month) and lambing interval (8.4 ± 0.17 month) were significantly Higher (P<0.05) in the HL than in ML and LL. For Goats, estimated average puberty age is (7.04 ± 0.10 months for male and 7.40 ± 0.10 months for female), first Kidding age is (13.04 ± 0.16 months) and lambing interval (8.5 ± 0.12 months) were significantly Higher (P<0.05) in the HL than in ML and LL agro ecology. The major opportunity of small ruminant production is that they requires short generation interval, high market demand smaller space and capital investment with index of 0.26, 0.24 and 0.23 respectively and the major constraints of small ruminant productions were Disease and parasite, feed shortage, insufficient grazing land were the major complaints told by our respondents.

Artificial insemination plays an important role in enhancing animal productivity, achieving increased milk and meat production through genetic improvement of indigenous cattle which have been the primary goal of the livestock development plan of Ethiopia