COMMERCIAL LIVESTOCK PRODUCTION GUIDE SERIES
Goat and Sheep Fattening
Technique in Nigeria
United States Agency for Information and Communication Support
International Development for Agricultural Growth in Nigeria
www.usaid.gov www.ics-nigeria.org ICS-Nigeria
Rearing Sheep with Goat in Nigeria
Choice of Land
A well-drained land with a stocking density of 15 animals per hectare.
Breeds
SHEEP
• West African Dwarf (Local)
• Balami
GOAT
• West African Dwarf (Local)
• Red Sokoto (Maradi)
To start a herd, get male animals of above a year of age with wide deep
chest, well-sprung ribs, and strong hindquarters. A buck can serve 20 does.
A doe should have at least two pairs of teats.
Housing
• Build a house with either bamboo or mud with thatched roof. Space
required is about 2 sq. m. per animal. House should be open on one
side. Walls up to 1.2 m on the other three, with a gap of 0.5 m to 0.8 m
between the walls and roof, to provide sufficient ventilation without
drought.
• Housing could be on raised floor made of bamboo with the thatched roof
covering mid-way into the pens on both sides. Space could be as above.
• Fencing: Leguminous fodder trees like Gliricidia sepium and Leucaena
leucocephala should be planted around the edges of the paddock to
form a solid fencing and browse plants for the animals. Slatted bamboo
or barbed wires can be used to complete the fencing.
Management procedure
A quarantine period of 30 days should be observed in bringing freshly
purchased animals into a flock. This gives ample time for observation and
attack by any disease. Animals of about 15 months of age or 12 kg (about
half weight of bag of livestock feed) should be purchased. They should be
bought from the villages rather than the market. The incidence of pestes des
petitis ruminants (PPR) or “Kata” a rinderpest-like viral disease is rampant
whenever goats from different sources are gathered in the local markets
for sale. Animals are dipped in gammatex or supona solution twice in two
weekly intervals. From the first day and for a period of 4 days, the animals
should be administered with triple sulphonamide, like theracazan. On the
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first day of arrival in the farm, they should be immunized with rinderpest hy-
per-immune serum followed by vaccination with tissue culture rinderpest vac-
cine (TCRV) on the 11th day. On the 3rd and 24th days of arrival, they should
be treated with broad-spectrum anthelmintic e.g., thiabendazole. In the
absence of veterinary drugs, newly purchased animals should be watched
closely. If there are signs of disease, such animals should be temporarily
culled. If the disease persists the animals should be disposed off.
Feeding
Feed adult animals with hay or crop residue free choice plus legume hay at
1-2 kg/animal/day. Maize, soyabean, cowpea, millet or sorghum straws
obtained after harvesting can be collected, treated and given to the animals
free choice. Dissolve about 0.5 of ash made from cocoa pod husk or 1kg
ash from palm bunch into a bucket of water to make a lye solution. Soak as
much of the straw as possible into the solution and leave it overnight. Feed
it straight the next morning or dry for some few hours before feeding, to in-
crease intake. Animals can then be allowed to graze or browse afterwards.
For pregnant does, and freshly weaned animals, it may be necessary to
feed some concentrate consisting of 40% wheat offals, 25% brewers’ dried
grains, 25% palm kernel mean, and 10% cassava peels or cowpea husk,
1% vitamin and 1% salt or supplement with 200g DM of legume fodder per
day in the last 2 months of pregnancy and up to weaning at 3 months post
partum.
Alley farming
Leguminous fodder trees (as under fencing) could be planted in rows on
arable land, with food crops planted between the rows. Trees often estab-
lished by direct seeding may be sown about 2 weeks after food crops like
maize, cassava, melon, yam etc. Spacing between trees should be about
25 cm (distance from head to the toe on a foot) with four rows of food crops
or 4 strides between two rows of trees. Browsing or cutting could start 1
year after planting. Advantages include provision of high protein fodder for
livestock and manure and mulch from the fodder maintain and improve soil
fertility for food crops while the trees limit erosion on sloping land.
Diseases
It is better to start a livestock farm during the dry season, as many of the diseases
prevalent among small ruminants are commonest during the wet season. In
case of outbreak of PPR (Kata), the affected animals should be isolated. Mouth
lesions should be treated with dilute solution of potassium permanganate. The
animals should be dewormed to control diarrhoea and treated with a potent anti-
bacterial agent for 3 days. Always consult your veterinarian.
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About ICS-Nigeria
Information and Communication Support for Agricultural Growth
in Nigeria (ICS-Nigeria) is a project which aims to increase the quantity
and quality of information available for increased agricultural production,
processing, and marketing and also strengthen the capacity of farmer assistance
organizations to package and disseminate information and agricultural
technologies to farmers for the alleviation of rural poverty.
In the recent past, investment in the support services to Nigerian agriculture has
been neglected with the result that this sector has not realized its full potential
to contribute to the prosperity and economic development of the country.
Meanwhile, increasing population pressure and the accompanying need to
intensify agricultural production is leading to erosion of the natural resource base
on which agriculture depends.
The sustainability of production is threatened by a vicious cycle of declining soil
fertility and increasing problems of pests, diseases, and weeds. Moreover, the
lack of knowledge on how to add value through proper storage, processing, and
marketing impedes agricultural growth.
Promising technologies exist to address these problems, but their adoption is
constrained by a lack of information packaged in appropriate formats, and poor
communication channels for this information, between farmers and the research,
extension, and education organizations that are supposed to address these
issues.
ICS-Nigeria aims to assist in meeting these challenges by developing
appropriate format materials for disseminating information and agricultural
technologies to target user groups, while increasing capacity of farmer assistance
organizations to produce information materials. At the same time, communication
channels will be reinforced so that information flow is enhanced.
Agricultural technologies have been selected on the basis that they will lead
to agricultural commercialization thereby enhancing rapid income generation
for farmers and private sector practitioners. The project is taking advantage
of existing agricultural development programs in Nigeria, national research
institutes, and international research institutes in and out of Nigeria to identify
these technologies. The project is also taking advantage of existing successful
partnerships arising from recent and ongoing programs to enhance information
flow.
ICS-Nigeria is funded by USAID.
International Institute
of Tropical Agriculture
www.iita.org
