Thupeyo Muleya, Beitbridge Bureau
MORE than 500 small scale livestock farmers in Beitbridge are set to benefit from a three-year livestock development programme that ends this year.

Livestock production is one of the major economic drivers in Beitbridge. The programme is being sponsored by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) as part of the Zimbabwe Resilience initiative.

The district’s head of Agriculture Extension Services (Agritex), Mr Masauso Mawocha said the main objective of the artificial insemination initiative was to empower small scale farmers to produce cattle breeds that compete on the market and can do well under the district’s climatic conditions.

He said they had engaged Matopo Research Centre to work on the programme.

Mr Mawocha said they had targeted to inseminate 1 200 animals.

“So far 1 056 cattle have been inseminated against a target of 1 200. A total of 204 and 546 inseminations were done in 2018 and 2019 respectively and we handled 310 animals this year in March, but stopped midway before we reached the 454 targeted for 2020,” said Mr Mawocha.

He said they are focusing mainly on the Tuli, Boran and Brahman as well as a few jerseys for farmers with access to irrigated fodder.

Mr Mawocha encouraged livestock farmers to practice good animal husbandry initiatives such as dehorning, castration, proper dosing, effective tick control and proper livestock feeding regimes.

He said farmers should embrace the introduction of breeds which have weight such as Tuli, Boran and Brahman although the Brahman is susceptible to drought.

“The idea is to promote resilience through introducing bloodlines from beef breeds that are hard in terms of diseases and nutritional needs,” he said.

In some cases, Mr Mawocha said, it was important to pen fatten animals before they go to the market.

“In addition, farmers need to ensure that heifers have reached at least 70 percent of mature weight of their mothers and have body condition scores of not less than 3,5 on 5-point scale,” he said.