Assessment of Beef Cattle Production and Marketing Practice in Eastern Oromia, Ethiopia

Abstract

A cross sectional study was conducted with the objectives to assessing beef cattle production and trading system in eastern Oromia.  Structured questionnaire and a onetime observation were conducted on 50 producers and 40 traders a total of 90 beef cattle producers and traders, which were, include purposively in the study using random sampling techniques to generate set data. Based on the result of survey made the producers kept cattle for multiple purposes, on average age of 6-9 years. Most farmers sold animals in near by village market. Major constraints for producers were feed shortage, animal health and lack of improve breeds. Traders transported mixed cattle in irrespective of ages, breeds, and sex to their destination which was on average 118.5±19 km via vehicle. Harar breed had high demand in local market while Boran was used for export purpose. The perception of traders on factors affecting the quality of beef indicated that beating, feed shortage, and agroecology were important being ranked 1^st, 2^nd and 3^rd respectively. From this study, it was concluded that quality of beef produced in study areas was relatively older. Resulted tough beef source. It is recommended that strategy should be developed to encourage premium payment for young cattle marketing that is not exposed to draft service and develop strategy to breed improvement to overcome stock decreases.

Keywords: Beef, Cattle age, Feed resource, Perceptions

DOI: 10.7176/FSQM/85-04

Publication date:March 31^st 2019