Agrinews October 2012 - Ministry of Agriculture

Botswana is known for its beef cattle and for quite sometime she has remained one of the major exports to the lucrative Europeanmarket. Many countries desire her beef industry. It is this industry that as a nation we should protect and nurture.It is because of the need to continue growing the beef sector that the Ministry of Agriculture through the Department of AgriculturalResearch, unveiled a new composite beef breed.The new breed has been named Musi. It was named after a ranch where it was developed.Development of this breed was started in 1982. It is only now that we are seeing tangible results of such work. For correct results,research calls for patience and perseverence. This is the only way to bring positive results.Musi, with the motto “Our breed, our Pride” is one of the outcomes of such patience. Batswana waited patiently for the research to besuccessfully completed.The composition of this new breed is Tswana 28.2 %, Tuli 4.4 %, Brahman 22.6%, Simmental 26.3 % and Bonsmara 18.4 %. The good newsis that the breed can be managed under the free grazing system.Agrinews would like to recommend this bull to farmers, considering its reproductive performance, as it produces calves at yearly intervalwith an annual calving rate of 70 %.The animal’s average weight at birth is 34.5 kg.The animal is also an efficient converter at feed lot (gains 2.1 kg/day) and cold dressed mass is higher than for Tswana, Tuli and Brahmanbut comparable to Bonsmara and it fetches super scale at 21 months of age.The reason, we recommend farmers to adopt the breed is because the composite breed is an economical beef producer with high preweaning and post weaning growth rates. It is well adapted to the sub-tropical environment prevailing in Botswana.As our own locally bred animal we should strive to take advantage of it to grow the national herd. If we do not take advantage of this newdevelopment and improve our cattle breed who else will? Other nations should envy this new product in the market.Who knows this might be a candidate for export. Musi might be another opportunity for us as a country to increase our beef export base.This is a product which we as a nation have to be proud to have produced. It is worth promoting and celebrating.