Breeds of Cattle in Ethiopia
Their size is probably due to a combination of lower nutrition and poor genetic selection over thousands of years. Typically, the male animals are not castrated, and the cattle are allowed to congregate together from different herds, so there's little or no control on the breeding of the animals. Due to their small size, we were not able to use these at all for embryo recipients and just ended up breeding them with Jersey semen.
In our program, we are working with the Boran cattle at the Adami Tulu Research Institution. Some of our boran heifers are pictured at the right. They are about 4 feet tall now, and will grow to 5 feet tall as adults. Unfortunately, due to a drought in Southern Ethiopia, many of those were not fed properly before they came to the Research Institution. Consequently, we were not able to put embryos in many of the animals that were acquired for that purpose.
We are hopeful that, with good feeding, these animals will be healthy enough to be used as embryo recipients on our next visit.
What about Fogera, Begait, Sheko, Abigar......breeds?
ReplyDeleteI did not have an opportunity to work with those breeds. Tell us about them.
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