Vet on call: The animals to keep on an acre for more profit

Susan Njeri feeds pigs in her farm in Nakuru. Pigs have an optimum turnaround time of six months and each good sow should produce about 20 pigs for the market per year. PHOTO | JOHN NJOROGE | NMG

What you need to know:

  • The kind of farming carried out at the rural home level is not targeted at making money as a business but as a way of meeting the household food needs and the occasional sale of animals and produce that brings in some income.
  • Subsistence farming also discourages young educated people from venturing into agriculture because they have seen their parents and other members of the community toil on the land without tangible financial gains.
  • If the environment is improved, livestock farming is likely to become profitable. A degraded environment results in lack of feeds and proliferation of diseases hence poor health and low productivity. This makes livestock farming unprofitable.
  • Farmers wishing to profitably rear different species of livestock on the same farm should have sufficient space to keep the animals well separated.

One question I am asked frequently is whether a farmer should keep only one species of livestock or many at the same time and on the same farm.

This is a difficult question especially if one needs a yes or no answer. From my experience, the question revolves around the upbringing of the majority of Kenyans.

Many were born and raised on subsistence farms where there were different types of animals including dogs, cats, cattle, sheep, goats and chickens. Some households had pigs, rabbits, ducks and turkeys as well.

The kind of farming carried out at the rural home level is not targeted at making money as a business but as a way of meeting the household food needs and the occasional sale of animals and produce that brings in some income.

Such farmers will never be able to determine if they made any profit or not from their livestock because they do not keep proper records of their farming expenses.

The fact, however, is that they actually do not make profit but they do get some income. This phenomenon is one of the reasons why our livestock farming has dwindled over time to the extent that most households in the high rainfall areas will have on average two to four animals.

Subsistence farming also discourages young educated people from venturing into agriculture because they have seen their parents and other members of the community toil on the land without tangible financial gains.

The reduction of household animal holding is greatly influenced by the availability of land and labour. Many farmers, therefore, end up mixing livestock but keep them in small numbers because the different species have different requirements in terms of space, food and care. The cow requires the most space while the chicken requires the least.

Last week, two farmers inquired whether they could keep goats, cattle, pigs and chicken on an acre.

WITHOUT UNDERSTANDING

If you wish to do mixed livestock farming, it is important to define if your aim is subsistence or making profit. I always advise people to plan to do business farming because once a farmer is making profit, family sustenance is automatically achieved.

Nonetheless, anyone planning to go into business farming needs to appreciate the statement by Shimon Peres, who at one time was the Prime Minister and President of Israel, that “People don’t realise agriculture is 95 per cent science and 5 per cent work.”

You see, many people start livestock agriculture without understanding that animals are live biological assets that interact continuously with their environment and that also modify the environment to improve or degrade it.

If the environment is improved, livestock farming is likely to become profitable. A degraded environment results in lack of feeds and proliferation of diseases hence poor health and low productivity. This makes livestock farming unprofitable.

Science plays a great part in livestock production because good feeding, disease control and prevention and the harvesting and preservation of livestock produce is all enabled by scientifically defined processes.

I explained to the two farmers that an acre was too small for cattle, sheep, goats, chicken and pigs to be kept together in commercially viable numbers.

The science of disease prevention demands that pigs and chicken be well-separated and taken care of by different people to prevent the sharing of influenza viruses.

When swine and avian (bird) influenza viruses mix, they develop a super virus that also affects humans. A mixture of the human, swine and avian viruses would also be a deadly germ.

From the productivity perspective, it would be good for the farmers to keep one species or two species that do not share viruses which can mix.

Chicken and pigs should, however, never be kept together on the farm. Their best bet economically is either cattle and chicken or pigs and cattle.

My preference for the size of land would be to keep one species being either cattle or pigs because sheep and goats are unlikely to be profitable on one acre, especially if one is also residing on the land.

HIGHEST PROFITABILITY

In the past, I have advised farmers on rearing multiple species of livestock on the same fairly small piece of land. Two farmers specifically converted their farms into profitable business units.

One kept cattle and pigs while the other kept pigs alone. In both cases, the farmers had to look for more land to expand their businesses.

Eventually, the farmer with pigs and cattle separated the farms and each had its own management because of the different needs of the two types of livestock. The pig farmer continued with his monoculture farm model.

Farmers wishing to profitably rear different species of livestock on the same farm should have sufficient space to keep the animals well separated.

Each livestock type should be kept in sufficiently large numbers to ensure they are profitable. In addition, each livestock species should be reared as a business unit with its own management while the whole farm has one general manager.

This arrangement allows for each unit to fully understand the science of rearing the animals and the management practices that ensure profitability.

In general, broiler chicken, pigs and cattle have the highest profitability while sheep and goats have the lowest. The main reason is because broiler chickens have a short turnaround time of 42 days from hatching to slaughter and can allow a farmer to produce at least three production cycles in a year.

Pigs have an optimum turnaround time of six months and each good sow should produce about 20 pigs for the market per year.

A good dairy cow, on the other hand, should give one calf per year and on average 20 litres of milk daily for 305 days.