The Sunday News
Mhlupheki Dube
ONE important livestock management activity which farmers can undertake during the national lockdown is a veld reconnaissance exercise. This is nothing other than a thorough physical and practical assessment of your veld.
This is an exercise that requires you to walk around your veld in your various paddocks for those that have paddocked farms or around the entire grazing field for those that may not be paddocked.
The main aim of a veld reconnaissance exercise is for the farmer to be able to assess his veld and general farm condition.
It is a time to take stock of the state of everything in your farm, especially in the veld. You want to know the state and nature of vegetation in your farm, that is, the dominant vegetation species in each area, the state of invader species, and the level of bush encroachment.
You also want to assess the availability of the grass for grazing, is there enough grass to sustain your animals through the remainder of the year? What is the predominant grass species, is it palatable or non-palatable?
You will also want to know the existence of noxious weeds in your veld, which area is infested with such weeds? Is it a significant portion of your grazing? What can possibly be done to prevent your animals from grazing in those areas harbouring noxious weeds?
Also during the veld reconnaissance process you would want to understand the geography of your farm and its navigability by your animals. I have seen some farmers losing animals to fractures because of the terrain on which they drive their animals for grazing.
Some of the areas are too steep and rocky as well as having dangerous gullies. Some animals have fallen into gullies, died and even decomposed without the owner knowing the whereabouts of his animal. The owner is left frantically searching for months and probably even concluding that his/her animal fell into the hands of stock thieves, when its remains are lying in some gully in the veld.
Farmers would know that such areas with precarious geography tend to have patches of palatable grasses and even browsable trees that are favoured by livestock and as your animal tries to access these areas, it may slip and incur a fracture or plunge into a gully.
It is therefore, important for farmers to know such sections of their farms so that you can have mitigatory action if the area is too dangerous to have your animals grazing. Therefore, veld reconnaissance and assessment is an exercise which a farmer needs to do on his own, not to delegate to a worker who may not even have a clue of what to look for. In fact in most cases farmers do not even delegate the exercise to the workers but opt to get answers by asking the questions “anjani amadlelo” (how is the grazing)? Usually the worker will just answer “a-right” (it is fine).
Whatever that means, a lazy farmer takes it to mean that, the grazing is in a satisfactory state, but does it answer all those questions we asked above? The answer is an emphatic NO because this is one of those “do-it-yourself” exercises. Like I said in one of my previous articles let’s utilise the abundant time that has been granted to us by the national lockdown to do such important exercises in our farms, because we normally would not have adequate time to do it.
I reiterate again that, what I call a farm, is wherever you are keeping your animals. It does not have to be primarily a privately-owned farm only because the need for such exercises is applicable to any area for as long as you are keeping your animals.
The modalities may differ but the essence remains the same. Maybe after doing a veld reconnaissance exercise you may discover that while your farm has very little grass for grazing, it actually has an abundance of browsable tree species that can be easily be milled into a bush meal. I have written before about the significance of bush meal as a supplementary feed for your animals especially in drier regions of the country which invariably have inadequate grazing.
Some farmers in countries like Namibia are now producing bush meal in metric tonnes for their animals and this is not only helping to feed their animals but to control bush encroachment and open up the land for grass growth.
Uyabonga umntakaMaKhumalo.
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