Comparative Evaluation on Productive and Reproductive Performance of Indigenous and Crossbred Dairy Cow Managed under Smallholder Farmers in Endamehoni District, Tigray, Ethiopia

Abstract

The study was conducted in Endamehoni District Sothern zone of Tigray region, Ethiopia. Objective of this study was to investigating productive and reproductive performance of indigenous and crossbred Dairy cow Managed under smallholder farmers in Endamohoni District. The total sampled numbers of household’s was 180 dairy cow owners, 90 each from indigenous and crossbred dairy cow owners respectively. The primary data was collected using semi-structured questionnaire and interview. For the analysis descriptive statistics such as frequency, percentage, mean, and standard deviation and test statistics such as chi-square and t-test was used. Average daily milk yield 1.67 and 4.60 liters, average lactation length 8.93 and 9.72 months and lactation yield of 281 and 1208 liter for indigenous and crossbred Dairy cow was recorded, respectively. Productive and reproductive performances of indigenous dairy cows are significantly lower than crossbred cows. These variations are attributed to the genetic variation of the breeds. The major constraints of Dairy cow production in the study area were feed shortage, disease problem and lack of supplementary feed with technological constraints. The present study suggests that crossbred cows were better than indigenous cow’s in terms of their productive and reproductive performance improving the livelihood of smallholder farmers.

Keywords: Dairy production, breed preference, age at first calving, lactation yield