The Sunday News
IN recent weeks I have been inundated with phone calls from farmers across the country about cows that are now too weak to walk to in search of feed.
In one of the cases it was a lactating cow which could no longer even walk. In another case the cow could only rise with assistance from the farmer and then it would stagger into the dry empty veld. What was clear in all the cases was that they were all nutritionally related incidences than disease related.
However, what was surprising is how the farmers easily thought that the failure of their animals was caused by a disease even though most of them were severely emaciated that it should have been logical for them to suspect the nutritional status of the animal as the cause for its condition.
This article therefore seeks to reiterate the importance of nutritional plane to animals especially breeding cows.
Beef cows that have been nutritionally stressed during gestation and lactation will be less productive than cows which received adequate diets.
A beef cow’s daily ration must meet nutritional requirements for it to be adequately productive. Cows will lose body weight when consuming less energy than needed for maintaining body functions and production demands. If this energy is not fed in the diet, the cow will take nutrients from her body to meet her energy demands. Productivity in cows is measured by its ability to drop a calf every year. It is a scientifically known fact that if cows lose 15 percent of their body weight their reproductive system shuts down. In other words the ovarian processes stops and the cow no longer ovulates to release the egg which should be fertilised for conception to take place. In simpler terms there is no chance of your cow giving you the calf that you badly want for your herd to grow.
In addition a cow that loses more than 15 percent of its body weight will need to gain more than the 15 percent it lost for the ovarian processes to resume.
In other words if a cow which is 300 kilogrammes in weight loses 45 kilogrammes and the nutritional plane continues to decrease it will shut ovarian processes and it will need to gain more than 45 kilogrammes of weight in a rising plane of nutrition for it to resume the cycle.
Beef cows that do not get sufficient feed during gestation and lactation may have additional areas of poor production.
Underfeeding during gestation will reduce birth weights but may increase the number of difficult births or dystocia.
Undernourished or thin cows may have reduced quantity and quality of colostrum.
Colostrum containing lower levels of immunoglobulins causes calves with more illnesses during early lactation. Reduced immunity may lead to poorer calf survival rates. A ration should be balanced for energy, crude protein, minerals and vitamins.
Any nutrient deficiency will lead to reduced digestion and metabolism. Nutrients are needed by the cow in constant proportions every day.
Reducing nutrients below the animal’s requirements will limit production.
Reduced mineral and vitamin feeding will also lead to unthriftiness, reduced immunity, calving dystocia, reduced calf survivability, decreased milk production, longer interval to rebreeding and a reduced number of cows rebreeding.
What, however, boggles the mind is why do smallholder communal farmers neglect their animals to the levels where the animal becomes recumbent due to severe emaciation? I know the easier answer people jump to is that there will be nothing in the veld for the animals to graze.
The question will still remain, what did you do about it? I know farmers in some districts who live next to an irrigation scheme which produces a lot of maize and wheat stover and in many times this stover is burned because irrigation farmers have no use for it especially those farmers without cattle or it is simply too much for them to absorb all of it.
The farmers who are outside these irrigation schemes do absolutely nothing to try and carry this stover to their homes and feed their animals.
They can even beneficiate the stover by adding molasses to increase its nutritive value and this can help to ensure their cows do not deteriorate severely during the lean season.
Surely I think at times farmers just let laziness get in the way of productivity. In case you are not close to an irrigation scheme to benefit from stover there are still other drought mitigation measures you can use to ensure the productivity of your cows is not compromised.
Farmers can and should collect nutritious tree pods such as the acacia pods and feed their animals. The pods have around 14 percent crude protein which is actually higher than most commercial stock feeds and they are for free.
All you need is the collection strategy and you can save your animals. Uyabonga umntakaMaKhumalo.
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