Tropical Homegardens - library.uniteddiversity.coop

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1.3. Animal husbandry
R.R. THAMAN T
ET AL.
Small-scale animal husbandry, although playing a minor role compared with plant
food production, is also an important activity in urban and rural homegardens. In
Port Moresby suburbs studied in the 1970s, animal keeping was minimal, with 11 of
79 households keeping pigs, chickens, or ducks and a few households keeping
tethered cows or goats. More recently, there are a few reports of urban household
pigs, and of raising pigs on food wastes at the city dump (Hide, 2003), but there has
been no recent detailed study. Pigs were not kept in Suva, but in Tonga over half of
all sample households kept tethered or penned pigs, and almost two-thirds kept
chickens or ducks. In most cases, poultry were penned or tethered at night and
allowed to roam around during the day, and pigs and other larger animals were
generally tethered or penned at all times. In Kiribati, Tuvalu and Nauru, pigs and
chickens are also kept on home allotments. In Nauru, there was a large communal
pig rearing area along the beach in Denigomodu District. In Betio, the most heavily
populated area of South Tarawa, there was a large communal pig rearing area with
individualized pens, established by the local town council, under coconuts,
breadfruit, and other trees. In Tuvalu, pigs are kept near the main urban village
along the airport runway on the seaside of the main Fogafale Islet, where they are
fed with kitchen wastes and mangrove leaves. In general, homegardens in rural areas
also have animals which are penned, tethered, or sometimes free ranging –
particularly chickens around houses, which also serve to control cockroaches and
other insects.
Apart from kitchen waste, the main feed for pigs and chickens in most areas is
coconut kernel. In Tonga, goats and pigs are commonly fed the leaves of Leucaena
leucocephala, Pisonia grandis, and Erythrina variegata, while “living edible pens” (pens
with edible living fencing) for poultry and pigs are made of these same species, plus
others such as Hibiscus tiliaceus s and Polyscias s spp., all of which are easily pruned or
pollarded to provide fodder. On open lands, horses, cattle, and goats are commonly
tethered to trees, which also give them shade. Small animal pens that are commonly
constructed of coconut logs, bamboo, Leucaena, or other local timber are also
found occasionally. In rural homegardens, pigs, goats, and even cattle in Fiji, are
stall-fed, or rotationally tethered to trees or fence posts where they can graze or
browse.
On the negative side, grazing animals and pigs seem to accelerate agrodeforestation
in urban areas through browsing or trampling effects. Once established,
however, trees and animals co-exist well, except where browsing goats eat the bark
of trees. Cattle, in fact, seem to enhance the establishment and spread of guava
(Psidium guajava), which although an important fruit, medicinal, and fuelwood
source, has become a noxious pasture weed in many areas. Another serious problem
related to pig keeping in urban areas is the effect of high-nutrient waste runoff on
the nearby shore coral reefs. Nutrient-enriched water favors the growth of algae and
phytoplankton over the growth and maintenance of coral reefs, which require clear,
nutrient-poor waters. In the rural outer islands of Ha’ppai in Tonga, free-ranging
pigs were seen as one of the major constraints to expanded homegardening and the
planting of trees in rural villages (Thaman et al., 2001).