Research Article
Perschbacher PW
Abstract
The study was conducted to assess local dairy cattle production and reproduction performances in rural community of Wolaita Zone, Southern Ethiopia from January to May 2015. Multistage sampling method was used and it was collected from both primary and secondary sources. The collected data was analyzed statistically using SPSS (version 20) for windows. The study reported that in overall average, 1.723, 1.536, 1.59, 1.589, 1.49 and 5.704 of dairy cows, heifers, calves, oxen, bulls and total cattle per households, were found, respectively. The average values of dairy cows, calves and oxen numbers were declare significant variation across agro-ecologies, while heifers and bulls numbers were not significantly vary due to agro ecology effect in the study area. The study also showed that the average values of daily milk yield and lactation length were, respectively, 2.127 ± 0.094, 1.861 ± 0.084 and 1.989 ± 0.063 liters; 11.875 ± 0.748, 9.821 ± 0.661 and 10.802 ± 0.503 months in midland, lowland and overall in the study area and the values were declare significant between agro-ecologies. While values of 20.167 ± 1.177, 19.658 ± 1.186 and 19.913 ± 0.832 months were reported for calving interval; 4.022 ± 0.142, 3.926 ± 0.090 and 3.818 ± 0.104 years for age at first calving cow in midland, lowland and overall, respectively, however, they have no significant different in both parameters (calving interval, age at first calving across agro-ecologies (midland and lowland) in the study area.