This document summarizes a project in Ethiopia that aimed to improve cattle health, milk quality, and farm incomes using natural livestock farming methods. The project worked with two dairy farming communities, analyzing health problems and training farmers. It found that adopting natural livestock farming layers led to increased milk production and quality. Farmers successfully used herbal medicines to treat diseases and shared their experiences. The project empowered women by teaching herbal medicine use. Moving forward, the document recommends revising drug lists, improving local breed productivity, testing for antibiotic residues, and developing indigenous veterinary knowledge.

1. Natural Livestock Farming:
Experiences from Ethiopia
Ethiopian Society
of Animal
Production
Getachew Gebru, Daniel Temesgen, and Tafese Mesfin

2. Importance agriculture / livestock sector
• Agricultural sector of Ethiopia accounts for about 42% of GDP and
between 80–85% of employment (MoFED, 2012).
• Livestock: Contributes 19% of the GDP, and 16–19% of the foreign
exchange earnings of the country.
• Livestock: Contributes 45% of agricultural GDP; if indirect
contributions are taken into account (ILRI, 2011).
• substantial opportunities for export, thus earning foreign exchange
from livestock products, especially of red meat to the Gulf and within
Africa, as well as leather, honey and other livestock products to
Europe.

3. Major livestock production zones in Ethiopia
Sere and Steinfeld (1996) classification
- lowland grazing (LG) systems and
Mixed (MR) systems:
Mixed rainfall deficient (MRD) systems
Mixed rainfall sufficient (MRS) systems
MoA classification of districts in the mixed
(MR) crop-livestock production zone into
moisture deficient and moisture sufficient
districts (MoA 2013).

4. The specialized systems
Dairy systems Differentiated according to herd size in
- specialized smallholder systems
- larger commercial systems
Both using crossbreds based on exotic breeds.
Cattle fattening operations - Differentiated according to herd size,
but mainly using indigenous breeds
Poultry systems - Differentiated into:
- commercial broiler and layer operations using exotic breeds
- family or backyard poultry livestock systems with smaller flocks
of dual-purpose scavenging or semi-scavenging breeds

5. Key demographic and production
parameters of cattle according to systems

6. Milk production
Total milk (cattle, goat and camel)
production (‘000 liters) by agro-
ecological zones
Total cow milk production (‘000 liters) by
agro-ecological zones (Barry et al 2013)

7. Focus areas of NLF Ethiopia
• Management of cows and calves
• Milk Quality
• Reduced use of antibiotics
• Revitalize Knowledge on herbal medicine

8. ARF proposal developed based on the
components of the NLF five layer approach
“Healthy Cows – Healthy Food – Healthy Environment”:
Enhancing safety and quality of milk in Ethiopia :

9. Project background
• NWO - Applied Research Fund (ARF) project (3 years)
• October 2017-October 2020
• Leader: ESAP (Ethiopian Society of Animal Production)/NLF
Network ETHIOPIA
• NLF NL partners: Wageningen Food Safety Research, Dutch
Farm Experience
• NLF India partners: TDU, Tanuvas
• Veterinary Drug and Animal Feed Administration and Control
Authority (VDFACA) Laboratory
9

10. Project goals
Overall goal: Improve quantity and quality of milk
1. Enhance the Veterinary Drug Feed Administration
Control Authority (VDFACA) laboratory capacity
2. Improve cattle health and management in two
pilot communities, through implementation of the
Natural Livestock Farming (NLF) 5-layered
methodology
3. Establish outcomes through milk quality control

11. 1. Improving laboratory capacity
VDFACA
 Brand-new laboratory building
 Motivated staff
 Good equipment available
 7 staff trained at Wageningen
Food Safety Research (Oct2018)
1
1

12. 2. Improving cattle health and mangement
in two dairy communities
• Debre Zeit - peri-urban
communities
A. Relocated farmers
B. Common place settlement
farmers
• Between 2 and 10 cattle per
farmer
• Zero-grazing system, landless
farmers
1
2

13. Participatory analysis of cattle health problems
1
3
Using wheel of animal health and wellbeing

14. NLF – layer 1
Animal management analysis - a
1
4
• Feeding:
– Low quality and quantity of fodder
– Improper feed balance (not enough
roughage)
– Feed quality – impurity (aflatoxine?)
– Feeding management
• Water:
– lack of clean water provision
– often mixed with feed

15. NLF – layer 1
Animal management analysis - b
1
5
• Housing:
– lack of ventilation
– lack of drainage
– Uncomfortable floors
– tied too short
– Manure waste management

16. NLF – layer 2: Breeding
1
6
• Fertility problems
• Continued cross breeding with
Holstein Friesians
• Low resilience – high calf mortality
• Inbreeding – in use of bulls
• Lack of timely AI service
• Farmers limited choice on semen used

17. NLF – layer 5: Farm income
1
7
• Milk marketed through formal
dairy chain
• Profitability low due to:
– high costs of feeding (all
feedstuff bought in market
– high mortality rates
• Veterinary services often not
available and expensive

18. Small dairy holders from Debre Zeit:
Training and practicing herbal medicine
application, and on improved calf care

19. Impact of the training
• The success of practical training mastitis control of mastitis - farmers have
witnessed the effectiveness of EVP in treating mastitis.
• Women empowerment in the use of herbs to treat mastitis, wounds and
diarrhea – women grow Aloe vera and other herbs in their garden
• Training on hoof trimming and calf care with support from Netherland dairy
farmers
• Residue levels in milk were shown to be reduced
• Use of clean milking can-Mezican from SNV
• Housing and feeding changes

20. NLF 5 layer adopters - milk production
0 5 10 15 20 25
14
20
23
25
27
30
Frequency of adopters
Milk
production
in
lit

21. Non Adopters - milk production
0 2 4 6 8 10 12
14
15
20
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
30
Frequency of non adopters
Milk
production
in
Li/day

22. • Sharing experiences on herbal medicine
beyond project location
• Set up herbal gardens
• Milk quality profiling at communities project
site
• Management (feeding and housing)
improvement - link with feed processing
company: Ethio-Feed
Current activities

23. • Follow up on the effect of the EVP training in Debrezeit on
the control of mastitis with dairy farmers.
• Lobby for EVP recognition in other institution (Jinka
University, Ministry of Culture)/Center of Excellence for
traditional knowledge.
• Participate in annual (Antimicrobial Resistance) AMR day
organized by Ethiopian Veterinary Association (EVP)
through paper presentation.
• Preparation of report on milk quality, use of herbal
remedies and women empowerment in smallholder dairy
farming in Ethiopia.
Current activities

24. Current activities: Promoting women empowerment
• The program promoted
gender equality under the
rigorous effort to adopt
herb technologies more
appropriate for women
• Developing and facilitating
action learning, exchange,
and training as core
actions.
• Raising women's
leadership skills

25. Way forwawrd
1. Revision of drug list: There is a need to revise the list of drugs for Ethiopia
by the Ethiopian Veterinary Drugs and Feed Control Authority so as to
include herbal medicines so as to reduce synthetic antibiotic use.
2. Husbandry options to improve productivity of local breeds should be
further investigated with recent feeding technologies.
3. Antibiotics residue tests should be made available for milk collectors and
processors so that milk with antibiotics is avoided from reaching the food
chain.
4. There should be a research direction towards addressing local indigenous
knowledge in ethno-veterinary to develop herbal medicines for dairy cattle.
Local knowledge should be standardized and made available to the wider
dairy herding community.
5. The dairy breeding policy should be cognizant of the fact that local breeds
resist more diseases than improved dairy breeds. With the prevailing large
population of local cows, increasing the productivity of local cows should be
given attention to improve milk production nationwide.

26. www.naturallivestockfarming.com
Thank you!