Journal of Fisheries & Livestock Production
Open Access

Research Article

Constraints, Opportunities and Challenges of Cattle Fattening Practices in Urban and Peri-Urban Kebeles of Dessie Town, Ethiopia

¹College of Agriculture, Arba Minch University, P.O. Box 21 Arba Minch, Ethiopia

²College of Veterinary Medicine and Agriculture, Addis Ababa University, P.O.Box 34 Debre-Zeit, Ethiopia

*Corresponding Author:

Ahmed K
College of Agriculture, Arba Minch University
P.O. Box 21 Arba Minch, Ethiopia
Tel: 0922548501
E-mail: kassahunahmed220@gmail.com

Received Date: September 23, 2016; Accepted Date: October 10, 2016; Published Date: October 20, 2016

Citation: Ahmed K, Tamir B, Mengistu A (2016) Constraints, Opportunities and Challenges of Cattle Fattening Practices in Urban and Peri-Urban kebeles of Dessie Town, Ethiopia. J Fisheries Livest Prod 4:203 doi: 10.4172/2332-2608.1000203

Copyright: © 2016 Ahmed K, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

The present study was conducted to investigate the constraints, opportunities, and challenges of cattle fattening in the urban and peri urban kebeles of Dessie town. Complete enumeration technique was used to select urban and peri urban kebeles. To select individual cattle fatteners, systematic random sampling and complete enumeration techniques were applied for peri urban and urban kebeles, respectively. A total of 190 cattle fatteners were included and interviewed using pre tested structured questionnaire. In addition to structured questionnaire, group discussions and key informant interviews were carried out to support the survey data. Recurrent drought and feed shortage (1st), feed price increment (2nd), unsuitability of the environment (3rd), Illegal brokers (4th), inaccessibility of cattle market (5th), credit based market (‘dube’) (6th) were the major identified constraints in per urban cattle fattening practices in their order of importance, whereas, feed price increment (1st), recurrent drought and feed shortage (2nd), unsuitability of the environment (3rd), capital problem (4th), illegal brokers (5th), credit based market (6th) limited brewery grain access (7th), difficulty to compare with peri urban and rural cattle fatteners (7th), lack of cooperation with in the association member’s (7th), limited access to credit (7th), lack of processed and mixed ration feed suppliers (11th) unpredictable cattle market (11th) were the major recognized constraints in urban cattle fattening practices in Dessie town. In consistence with different constraints the cattle fattening sector in Dessie town tightened with so many challenges which needs short and long term solution. Better housing system (clustering approach), absence of endemic health problem of fattening cattle, presence of five functional flour factories, increase demand for meat, presence of federal as well as regional government great emphasis, motives and interest of the educated society to be part of the sector, availability of infrastructure such as road and electric access were the identified opportunities related to cattle fattening practices in Dessie town.

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