Fodder and feed intervention improves milk productivity
Ibrahim Hassen, 57, is a father of five girls and two boys and lives in Doho village, Afar Regional State. The main source of food for his household is milk and milk products. He also earns some amount of money working as a laborer in the nearby Kesem Sugar Factory though his wages are inadequate to cover his household expenses. Recurrent droughts have deteriorated pasture of the rangelands and his lactating cow was malnourished and got sick. He used his hard-earned money from his job as a laborer to buy drugs for the cow. The drought was taking a toll on the animals. “My milking cow with its four month calf would have died if the fodder and feed intervention was late by a week,” he says. He is referring to the fodder and feed distributed by the USAID-supported project Pastoralist Areas Resilience Improvement through Market Expansion (PRIME) to vulnerable households with the support from Office of US Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA).
PRIME responded to the emergency situation through a voucher system, distributing a 105-kg of hay and 45-kg of concentrated feed per lactating cow. Ibrahim fed the lactating cow daily according to the prescribed amount by the community animal health workers. “Praise Allah and PRIME, my cow and its calf health condition has been improving for the last two weeks since they started eating the fodder and the feed. Its daily milk productivity rose to five liters from half a liter before the intervention. Words are not enough to express my happiness when I see my children enjoying milk,” he says.[read more = “Continue Reading..” less=”Less”]The intervention has benefited 7000 pastoral households of Amibara, Awash Fentale, Gelauelu and Gewane woredas by protecting productive livestock assets from undesirable effects of pasture shortages resulting from prolonged failure of rain and supported household nutrition of vulnerable family members.
PRIME project is a five-year (2012-2017), USAID-funded Feed the Future initiative aimed at increasing incomes of 250,000 households and enhancing resilience to climate change through market opportunities in Ethiopia’s pastoral dry land areas.Please click the link to download this success story.
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