The government through Uganda’s National Animal Genetic Resources Centre and Data Bank (NAGRC&DB) has hired experts to help in improving animal genetics in the country.
While opening a workshop held at Imperial Hotel last week, minister of Agriculture, Animal Industry and Fisheries, Vincent Ssempijja said the country’s farmers should embrace modern, commercial breeding systems.
“In reality, our farmers have been looking after animals that do not reward them much so we want to get them into animals that give them enough milk and meat and also enable them to get better income,” Ssempijja said.
“We are getting into an era where our farmers must be competitive; we must be able to live within the competition that is surrounding them already. We are not doing this alone but there other farmers in Kenya, Botswana, South Africa, Egypt and as far as Europe, America and Asia in this improved breeding,” he said.
Dr Charles Lagu, Executive Director, NAGRC&DB explained that they are rolling out a community breeding programme. The idea is to make sure they deepen community breeding to improve on indigenous breeds and to enhance milk production and high quality animals for meat.
“Now you realise that 90 per cent of our animals are indigenous, which are very good in disease resistance but are below quality so the idea is to make sure we improve on our technology so that we roll to the community whether you have a small number of animal; all are targeted,” he said.
Lagu added that there will, however, still be sections to keep local breeds.
“We do not want to lose our indigenous breeds like long horned cows (Ankole), Zebu cattle and the Mubende spotted goats for cultural conservation,” he said. “What we are doing is called Xc2 (you collect the semen and embryo put together in the lab and store for years) conservation and Inc2 (designated farms are marked to keep particular breeds so that they are not lost).
Lagu said the centre continues to lobby for support from government to increase funding to support this initiative expected to cost trillions of shillings training of staff, importing good genetic material, semen, embryos and building infrastructure in all the regions.
It is estimated that with better breeds production will increase from 150kg to over 400kg carcass weight, and milk will increase from the current 10 litres per day to 25-30 litres per cow in a day.
The growth rate will be faster, down from five to one and half years to maturity with improved breeds.
First deputy Prime Minister, Gen Moses Ali, who was the chief guest, acknowledged the need to improve animal production.
“We need to upgrade our standards; adopt new technology to increase production and also fight poverty. We shall improve and produce for the international market with this initiative so that we can compete with other countries who are into [modern] dairy farming,” he said.
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