Research Results - (PDF, 101 mb) - USAID

1. Introduce selected farmers to production
schemes suggesting different levels of
returns from a village-intensive small ruminant
production operation;
2. Explain to the farmers the most ideal production
scheme, under different resource
endowments, to obtain a regular monthly
income from a small ruminant enterprise;
3. Introduce production technology packages
consisting of breeding, feeds and feeding,
management, health, and marketing strategies
for a complete commercial operation;
4. Test the intensive production schemes
introduced in terms of their economic
profitability, technical feasibility, and social
acceptability; and
5. Provide technology paclages for further
dissemination based on the production
schemes introduced, tested, and developed.
Proposed activities, objectives and
targets of each discipline are presented in the
following sections.
Breeding and Reproduction
Evaluating the animals' reproductive
performance is the main activity for the first
year of the VIIS project. The performance
measures are those treatments imposed by the
nutrition and management disciplines. Also,
evaluation will be made on the basis of the
breeding lines used (high and low prolificacy)
and from the performance of their progeny.
Live weight, post-partum oestrus, conception,
gestation length, litter size, pre-weaning growth
rate, mortality, and age and weight at puberty
are parameters to be recorded.
Feeds and Feeding
The nutrition subprogram activities
include observations on the effect of flushing on
the ewes during a six-week period before and
after parturition in order to improve the ewes'
productivity. Feed supplements, in the form of
mineral block mixed with 200 grams soybean oil
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cake, will be given daily to each of four ewes
while the other four are to be used as control
animals. Mortality rate, birth type, and weaning
weight are to be recorded. Feed intake will be
measured once a month. Laboratory analyses
are required for about 544 samples of each of
dry matter, nitrogen, and organic matter respectively.
Management
Research activities under the management
discipline will follow the production
schedule of the animals and implementation of
suggested management practices. Animal
housing, barn partitioning, health care, feeding,
and mating time, as well as the general procedures
for better animal management, are the
major tasks of the management discipline.
Production and Marketing
Efficiency in animal production, regular
farm income generated by small ruminant
enterprise, and a better marketing strategy are
among the objectives of the economic discipline
although there seem to be more exogenous
factors that play significant roles in determining
the success of this production scheme than those
endogenously manageable by the farmer. The
efficiency criteria to be evaluated are, among
others, time required to reach market age,
amount of inputs (labor and effort) used to
produce the marketed animals in terms of
marginal productivity of inputs used, and the
level of price received at the farmgate. The term
"market age" refers to the time at which the
animals are supposedly disposed with some
nominal returns to the farmer. The optimal time
is the period where the marginal benefits of
keeping the animals are a least equal to their
additional cost of holding the animals for some
additional time. Previous information on the
growth curve of village sheep production are
used to determine the time interval during
which the animals have to attain certain productivity
standards. It is expected that the scheme
will produce a generation of one-year-old
offspring each month after month seventeen of
the project. This provides the farmer with a
regular monthly income from selling the off­