Exploration of production conditions: a step towards the development of a community-based breeding program for Butana cattle

Abstract

In Sudan, many Butana cattle farmers practice indiscriminate crossbreeding to improve the milk yield performance of cows, as organized breeding programs are lacking. Objectives of this study were to identify the current production conditions of Butana cattle and to determine farmers’ production objectives and trait preferences using a field survey. The overall aim was to explore the possibility of establishing a community-based breeding program for the genetic improvement of the breed. A semi-structured questionnaire and field visits were used to collect data from 202 Butana cattle owners. Data were analyzed using chi-squared test, multiple response analysis, and binary logistic regression. Our results showed that Butana cattle farmers mainly raised their animals for milk production. On a five-point scale (5 = most important), milk yield (4.6 ± 0.05), growth performance (4.0 ± 0.07), and lactation length (3.9 ± 0.08) were highly preferred for future development of the breed. One-third of the farmers kept crossbred cattle with on average 4 crossbred animals per herd. About two-thirds of respondents were willing to adopt crossbreeding using exotic breeds to increase milk performance and about the same proportion were willing to exchange breeding bulls and establish farmers’ associations. None of the respondents kept written performance records. However, educated farmers were more likely to adopt record keeping. Farmers’ willingness to engage in associations could be useful for the establishment of a community-based breeding program. Based on the current farmers’ production objectives, the future breeding program should emphasize increasing milk production of the Butana cattle by using improved Butana bulls in village herds.

Development of a breeding program for improving the milk yield performance of Butana cattle under smallholder production conditions using a stochastic simulation approach

“…In the current simulation, we chose 1 polygenetic trait to reflect the farmers' production trait preferences for future genetic improvement in Butana cattle as determined by a survey in a previous study (Omer et al, 2020).…”

“…In each scenario, animals were randomly assigned to 202 farms in 17 villages according to their predefined herd size that varied from 2 to 23 cows (Table 1). These numbers represented the real number of villages, Butana cattle herds, and cows in the Butana region of Sudan (Omer et al, 2020). The 3 different breeding scenarios are hereby described.…”

“…The initial farm bulls (n = 202) were randomly selected from the founder population, and 1 bull was randomly assigned to each farm. The decision to assign a breeding bull to each farm, including those with small herd sizes, was motivated by the observation that some Butana cattle farmers tend to keep breeding bulls within small-sized herds of up to 2 cows (Omer et al, 2020). For farmers with small herd sizes, however, this could be costly and could affect the economic viability of the scheme.…”

“…Withinbreed selection is practiced on a research station to genetically improve the milk yield performance of the breed. However, Butana cattle farmers are not actively involved in the planning and implementation of this public breed improvement program (Omer et al, 2020), and they often do not have access to the improved genetics. Therefore, many Butana cattle farmers are more focused on crossbreeding with Holstein Friesian cattle (Musa et al, 2005;Ahmed et al, 2007) as a method to quickly improve the milk yield and their income from milk sales (Abdel Gader et al, 2007;Omer et al, 2020).…”

“…However, Butana cattle farmers are not actively involved in the planning and implementation of this public breed improvement program (Omer et al, 2020), and they often do not have access to the improved genetics. Therefore, many Butana cattle farmers are more focused on crossbreeding with Holstein Friesian cattle (Musa et al, 2005;Ahmed et al, 2007) as a method to quickly improve the milk yield and their income from milk sales (Abdel Gader et al, 2007;Omer et al, 2020). However, the extensive and unsystematic crossbreeding of Butana with Holstein Friesian has raised concerns over the fate and conservation of the Butana breed for present and future use (Musa et al, 2005).…”