ROMA – AFTER years of neglect, dairy farmers are beginning to get the attention they need to ensure they become one of the pillars of Lesotho’s economy.
The Lesotho National Dairy Board (LNDB) and the National University of Lesotho (NUL) have started a training programme for farmers to administer artificial insemination on their cows.
It is something that many animal specialists, including NUL researcher Motsamai Mochebelele, have been calling for over 30 years but were met with deaf ears.
In a 1990 study Mochebelele showed that farmers preferred using bull service because they did not have sufficient skills to administer artificial insemination, which hampered their dairy products.
Mochebelele found that the incidence of cows and heifers which were failing to conceive through artificial insemination was high.
He found that the conception rate at the first insemination for heifers, and re-insemination for adult cows was low, making up 44 percent.
After repeated re-insemination and failures, some farmers developed resentment against artificial insemination and were forced to resort to bull service, Mochebelele said.
“The low success rate of conception through artificial insemination has financial implications for farmers. The most obvious is breeding cost, but, more importantly, it leads to prolonged calving intervals and low returns from milk sales over the productive life span of cows,” he said in the study.
Mochebelele recommended that the government should assist the dairy farmers.
“Unless breeding services are improved to cover all dairy development areas, there is a very strong possibility that increased and indiscriminate cross breeding will take place,” he said.
Hopes are now high that such recommendations could be implemented after the LNDB chipped in despite its core business being to regulate the dairy industry.
The LNDB has offered M55 000 to facilitate training in artificial insemination for 11 farmers at the NUL. The university is sponsoring another 26 farmers.
Artificial insemination is a technique in which semen with living sperm is collected from a male and introduced into female reproductive tract at the proper time with the help of instruments.
The Chief Executive Officer of LNDB Abiel Mashale said the board was established to ensure that the dairy industry becomes a cog in the country’s fight to eradicate poverty.
Mashale the country uses about M20 million every year to import milk for processing due to the shortage of dairy cows in the country.
Mashale said the institution established a programme to help Basotho buy dairy cows from outside the country, resulting in the purchase of 100 cows by 38 Basotho.
However, Mashale said they felt more needed to be done to boost the country’s dairy herd so they identified farmers to attend the three day training programme in artificial insemination in South Africa at a cost of M3 000 each.
“However, we were not confident enough with those trainees to start the programme on their own,’’ said Mashale, explaining the reason to approach the NUL for a partnership.
Mashale said the country only had two artificial insemination experts.
Mashale said although they managed to inseminate 4 000 cows, that was still not enough since there are more cows which were not artificially fertilized during their heat period.
He said a dairy cow is supposed to sire calves every year but that has not been the case in the country for decades.
He said Lesotho has a shortage of brown and dairy Swiss species.
Acting Pro Vice-Chancellor at NUL, Dr Bernice Ekanjume, said the initiative will go a long way in boosting Lesotho’s economy.
“We are going to partner with more individuals and departments so that we can produce more artificial insemination experts. I am calling on our new trainees to be our ambassadors in the districts,” Dr Ekanjume said.
The NUL’s Animal Science Department Head of Department, Setsumi Molapo, said artificial insemination is cost efficient in producing high quality breeds.
Molapo said feeding a bull is expensive and artificial insemination allows the farmer to use a variety of high breed cow semen imported from other countries.
“When a bull mates with a cow it uses more semen which goes to waste. But this method saves more semen which can be used for insemination of more cows,” Molapo said.
“When the bull ejaculates there are 20 million sperms contained in the semen,’’ he said, adding that it is enough to inseminate 100 cows.
Molapo further said through this method you can import semen of a high quality bull from other countries at a lower cost to come up with good quality cows.
One of the trainees, Adam Khalala from Mafeteng district, said the training “has opened my mind”.
He said the price of one bull is too high for most of them adding that they had no clue how to correctly feed and take care of the bulls.
“This was imposing more cost in keeping this kind of animal’’ he said.
He said the training programme had equipped them with skills of how they could feed the animal and how to correctly inseminate them.
Khalala said this training is going to help them keep high quality cows.
It will also help them in having a record of their herds and their history.
He said in a month he uses about M1 000 to feed a bull.
Semen costs between M80 and M100 depending on the quality of the bull.
Reitumetse Nkoja, another trainee, said they realised that production of milk is one of the major keys to boosting the economy.
This training, she said, will help them breed high quality dairy cows to increase milk production.
Refiloe Mpobole