Cattle production systems in NW Cambodia

Mob Serey, Seng Mom, Theng Kouch and Chea Bunna

Centre for Livestock Development Studies
Royal University of Agriculture
serey.mob@gmail.com

Abstract

A baseline survey on cattle production system was conducted using a complete structured questionnaire involving 157 cattle farmers in Samlout and 112 in Sala Krau.

The population of female cattle was greater than males accounting for about three quarters of the population. The local cattle breed was dominant in these areas and the main production purpose was for selling followed by keeping for breeding. Reproduction status was much better than other parts of the country with an average of 14 months interval between calves. The cattle production system used very poor practice. Natural mating was done and the bulls were selected within their village. Calving time was not highly considered, and there was no calving plan, only a very small number of respondents planned for their calves to be born at particular months of the year in order to have sufficient feed. Disease prevention was taken into account for about half of the producers and the animals were mainly vaccinated for Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD) and Black Leg. Feeding depended heavily on tethered grazing and cut and carry of natural grasses. Very few cattle farmers feed crop residues as feed. Disease was believed to be the most important constraint to cattle production, followed by the lack of feed. In this region shortage of water was an issue since the two Districts are in upland areas. However, less than 10% of farmers face this problem. It was surprising to see that about one fourth of respondents have no difficulty for rearing cattle. The husband was the main person responsible for cattle management tasks in both areas. The greatest time was spent on herding and collecting feed.

Keywords: breed, feeding, management, reproduction, survey

Introduction

Crop and livestock farming are the major sources of food and income accumulation for Cambodian farmers (MAFF 2013). In these systems, there are mutual relationships within the systems deriving benefits from products or by-products of the other. In 2012, livestock contributed to about 14% of total agricultural GDP for Cambodia (MAFF 2013). In turn the animal manure was primarily used as natural fertilizer for maintaining soil structure and nutrients. Recently, however, the numbers of cattle in Cambodia have declined from 3.46 million heads in 2008 to 3.38 million head in 2012 (MAFF 2013). The decline in number of cattle is reportedly because of the decline in use of cattle as draught animals with the introduction of machinery for land preparation and transportation (MAFF 2013; Maclean 1998). As a result the raising of male animals for this purpose across the country has declined.

The expansion of cropping poses a severe concern to cattle farmers who rely mainly on grazing natural feed resources (MAFF 2013). Feed storage and improving feeding value for cattle during feed scarcity are generally done by a small number of livestock farmers and the majority of farmers use mostly rice straw which has very poor nutrient value. Consequently, cattle conditions are very poor during drought and flooding periods (Miranda et al 2009). In addition, cattle farmers are not willing to purchase grass or other feed resources for feeding the cattle because the return on investment in cattle takes longer than from crops and vegetables. Also the cattle traders are scattered; farmers have limited opportunity to participate in cattle marketing. Other common constraints to improved cattle production in Cambodia are:  poor management of animal husbandry such as weaning, vaccination and breeding practices (Miranda et al 2009).

Samlout and Sala Krau Districts are situated in the upland areas and more than 80% of farmers produce agro-industrial crops such as maize (Muniroth et al 2012). These areas are ideally suited for integrating crop-livestock systems. This study was conducted to investigate cattle husbandry practices and management in NW Cambodia.

Materials and Methods

The study areas

The study was undertaken to obtain baseline household data for implementing the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR) project: Market-focused integrated crop and livestock enterprises for North-West Cambodia. The investigation took place in Samlout District, Battambang Province and Sala Krau District in Pailin Province. In each District, 3 Communes and 5 Villages within each Commune were surveyed (table 1). Livelihoods in these areas rely mainly on agricultural production: cropping and livestock. The main crops are cassava, maize, mungbean, peanut, rice, sesame and soybean.

Figure 1. Map of Cambodia and selected areas for the baseline survey (Robert et al 2013)

Data collection methods and sample size

The surveys were piloted in Battambang and the enumerators were trained for the field work from the 23^rd to 30^th of January 2012. Over thirty students from the University of Battambang were trained. The data collection commenced on the 13^th of February and was completed on 2^nd of March 2012, with two teams working in parallel in the two Districts. A total of 832 farmers were interviewed, 455 in Samlout (75% male-headed and 25% female-headed households) and 377 in Sala Krau (84% male-headed and 16% female-headed households) using structured questionnaires. Farmers were randomly selected for both cropping and livestock systems. However, this paper focuses mainly on cattle production as a consequence, of the 832 respondents, only approximately 33% were cattle farmers and the large majorities were crop producers.

The main indicators for data collection included:

• Cattle herd composition, purpose, reproduction;

• General husbandry practice;

• Feeding characteristics;

• Challenges; and

• Household labor contribution to cattle production.

Data analysis

Data were coded and analyzed using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences version 16 (SPSS 2007) but the calculation and figure designs were done in Microsoft Excel 2010.

Results

Herd size and production purposes

In both study sites over three quarters of total cattle kept were females aged 2.5 years or over; the average number of cows in these areas was similar, with 2.3 cows in Samlout and 2.6 cows in Sala Krau. On the other hand, the number of heifers aged 0.5-3 years was different. In Sala Krau, farmer had 1.9 heifers, which were 0.4 head more than Samlout. Males comparing to female cattle were not really important for the producers, less than 30% of farmers had them.

Local breeds accounted for 81% of the cattle with crossbreds accounting for most of the other 19%. There was a small minority of Haryana but no Brahman breed kept by the respondents.

Cattle were kept for breeding and social security while less than 10% of respondents reared cattle for draught power and other purposes.

Figure 2. Contribution of cattle breeds	Figure 3. Purpose of raising cattle

Reproduction

The average age of cows was 4.1 and 4.3 years in Samlout and Sala Krau respectively. Nearly half in Samlout and over half in Sala Krau were approximately four months pregnant. The duration of cycling generally occurred in the rainy season (between September and October) since the survey was conducted at the beginning of the year. The cycling might be due to cattle having greater access to natural feed resources at this time. The calving interval of about 14 months was generally shorter compared to other parts of Cambodia.

Cattle management

Most cattle were owned by the family; whereas only about a quarter of farmers reared cattle for others. Typically, farmers did not obtain credit to purchase cattle as a household asset. The most common cattle production system employed low managerial practice. Less than 5% of farmers weaned their calves while 95% of calves were allowed to suckle until the cow again comes into heat.  Nearly half of producers desired their calves to be born in a specific month of the year while others did not pay attention to the time of calving. Only a few farmers castrated their male animals at around 25 months in Samlout and 20 months in Sala Krau. Three quarters of respondents selected the bull for mating and the bulls were chosen from within their village. The bull service cost approximately $8.50 per conception. Artificial insemination was not practiced in these areas. Several types of vaccines were used by about half of respondents. Twenty nine and nineteen farmers in Samlout and Sala Krau respectively vaccinated for FMD followed by blackleg. A very small number of producers carried out de-worming. Cattle manure was extensively utilized as fertilizer.

Feeding

The cattle feed came from various sources such as cut and carry natural grass, grazing, feeding crop residues (dominantly maize, peanut and mungbean), feeding planted forage and feeding rice bran with the trends following the seasonal availability (Figures 4 and 5). However, the majority of cattle farmers depended mainly on natural grasses. Cut and carry system appeared the most favored practice  and was carried out almost year round but there was a peak in July-September for about 50% of the respondents. Most cattle were tethered for grazing on the community grazing land between December and January when rice and other crops were harvested but from February to August, the tethered grazing declined as the fields were being under crop cultivation. In general, in Samlout, cattle were far more restricted compared to Sala Krau where animals have greater access to community grazing land by herding during the dry season. Only a small number of respondents fed crop residues. In addition to this, feeding of crop residues followed the availability – a peak in May-June and in October-November and commonly cattle were allowed to graze in the fields after the cobs and pods were collected. A very small number of producers used rice bran or planted forages for animals kept in pens.   

Figure 4. The trend of feeding practice in Samlout	Figure 5. The trend of feeding practice in Sala Krau

Difficulties for cattle production

According to respondents, diseases were the biggest constraint on cattle morbidity and mortality with nearly 40% experiencing contagious diseases in their animals. Limited feeding resources were the second obstacle in extending the number of cattle. More farmers in Samlout have fed shortages compared to Sala Krau. A very small proportion of respondents lacked water for cattle drinking. In Sala Krau, over a quarter of producers reported that they had no difficulty with cattle production indicating they were better off compared to livestock farmers in Samlout.

Figure 6. Difficulties with cattle production in Samlout	Figure 7. Difficulties with cattle production in Sala Krau

The male household members played the main role in cattle production (Table 6). They managed most of the tasks such as grazing, collecting natural grass, feeding, cleaning, and watering while the females contributed about half as much time to cattle raising activities. Children aged over 15 years shared a significant proportion of the cattle management workload. Grandparents also carried out activities such as grazing, cut-and-carry, cleaning, feeding, watering and manure management. With regard to time per task, grazing took about 3.5 and 3.9 hours per day in Samlout and Sala Krau respectively. Collecting natural grass took an average of 1.4 hours per time which was about 0.5 hours higher than collecting planted forage in both areas.

Discussion

Herd size and production purposes

The majority of respondents (75%) had only 1-3 heads of cattle. Farmers appeared to recognize the waste of manual labor to supervise and care for male animals. It was also evident that small-holder farmers reared cattle for breeding and growing for sale rather than for draught power. This finding is significantly different to those of Serey et al (2010), Miranda et al (2009), Sath et al (2008) and Maclean (1998) who found that cattle are an integral part of the farm system being used for animal traction as well as for breeding and sale. The differences are due to the increased use of machinery for land preparation in the North-West of Cambodia (Maclean et al 1998) and the current boost of cattle market prices (MAFF 2013). According to Daodu et al (2009), female numbers overtake males as the need for draught declines and the farmers retain females for breeding.

Two main types of cattle breeds (Local and Crossbred) are kept in these areas but local breeds are the most common. There are a number of possible reasons that farmers keep the local breed. Firstly, local cattle are relatively tolerant of low maintenance, poor feed supply and inadequate disease prevention (Maclean 1998). Secondly there were no improvements in cattle breeding such as artificial insemination.  Only a small number of farmers keep crossbred cattle but they generally used bulls from within their village. Lack of exchange of breeding stock can result in inbreeding leading to disease susceptibility, growth constraints and high rates of mortality at birth (Vutey 2008).

Reproduction performance

In this study the calving interval of 14 months tended to be shorter compared with other studies in Cambodia, being 4 months shorter than found by Miranda et al (2009). This could be due to breed. In this study the majority of the cattle were local breed which are usually cycling earlier since they have a low feed requirement and can complete calving cycles with limited feed resources (Maclean (1998). Crossbred cattle require more feed both for maintenance and reproduction (Maclean 1998). Another possible reason is greater availability of feed resources. According to this survey about 50% of the cows were pregnant in September and October when the natural grasses would be expected to be in decline.

Feeding

In Samlout and Sala Krau, households spent a large amount of time each day herding for grazing (3.7 hours) and collecting grasses (1.4 hours). According to this study and Miranda et al (2009) planted forage can reduce labor input. Werner and Peter (2001) and Lentes et al (2010) also stressed that planted forages could improve feeding value for livestock but there is no report on opportunity cost of allocating land for planted forages compared to other uses such as vegetable, fruit treess or cash-cropping. Furthermore, in NW Cambodia on average farmers own 2 to 4 ha (USDA 2010). Households grow cash-crops which generate income to purchase household needs and agricultural inputs. Hence, the priority is to use the land for cropping with limited opportunity to plant forages. The feeding potential of crop residues is an option that is currently under-exploited. Muniroth (2012) reported that 98% of farmers in Samlout and 90% of farmers in Sala Krau produced maize but unfortunately there are a very small number of cattle farmers (8%) feeding crop residues by grazing in fields after harvesting the cobs. This is probably because of traditional feeding practice, which is highly labor intensive for carrying maize stover home, preservation technique and materials. According to Reiber et al (2010), lack of chopping machinery was the main difficulty for small scale cattle producers to utilise crop residues. Crop residues such as maize husks, soybean and peanut plants that are brought to the house are usually burned.

Cattle management

Cattle are raised under small-scale conditions with poor management and husbandry. According to Miranda et al (2009), this may be because cattle are not the primary source of farmers’ income therefore they may pay less attention to the livestock production. They also do not appear to take account of the return on costs of cattle raising.

Difficulties in cattle production

Nearly half of producers thought transmitted diseases were the most serious constraint on cattle production followed by low feed availability. This is similar to the finding of Mutibvu (2012). However, lack of feed quantity and quality are most critical for animal health and performance as cattle require adequate nutrition to support growth and resilience to environmental impacts. Daodu et al (2009) indicated that animals are more susceptible to contagious diseases while they are grazing together as a herd. According to Werner and Varney (2007) retaining the animals in pens is better practice to prevent disease spread and to enable timely and effective treatment of animals.

Conclusion

• Besides disease, feed remains the major constraint on herd size development and this possibly poses a decline in cattle population. Farmers also have limited access to, and knowledge of, breeding programs. This results in most farmers holding local breeds. Cattle farmers still spend a great deal of times in managing a few cattle mostly in collecting natural grass and herding for grazing annually.

Acknowledgement

Special thanks to Professor Bob Martin who gave time to edit, add and comment on this article. We are  am very grateful to University of Battambang students and MJP staff who contributed to the data collection. We also sincerely thank ACIAR that funded our project. Finally, thanks  to Mr. Reginald Thomas Woodgate who allocated his time to editing this article.

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Received 24 January 2014; Accepted 15 February 2014; Published 1 March 2014

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