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- Title
Améliorer les pratiques d'alimentation des vaches traites en saison sèche, un levier pour augmenter le revenu des éleveurs laitiers extensifs au Burkina Faso.
- Authors
Sodré, Étienne; Moulin, Charles-Henri; Ouédraogo, Souleymane; Gnanda, Isidore Bila; Vall, Eric
- Abstract
West African dairy farmers are faced with constraints in feeding their cows during the dry season when rangelands are not rich enough in soft grass. This leads to a drop in the supply of local milk. To address this problem, farmers purchase expensive feedstuffs that they use sporadically. Some seem to cope by combining grazing, fodder and cattle feed. However, these strategies remain poorly known. This study aimed at characterizing dry season feeding practices of dairy cows in extensive farms in the South Sudanian zone of Burkina Faso in order to identify and promote innovative and economically viable feeding strategies. A household survey was conducted among 134 farmers supplying dairy processors in the cities of Banfora and Bobo-Dioulasso, in western Burkina Faso. The interviews aimed at characterizing the feeding practices of dairy cows during the dry season. The study presents a typology of dairy cows feeding systems, highlighting a technically and economically promising feeding system, however practiced only by few farmers. In this system, the dairy cows receive good quality fodder in sufficient quantity (3360 ± 1424 kg dry matter/cow/year) and moderate quantities of feed concentrates (253 ± 244 kg gross weight/cow/year) during the dry season, in addition to a reasonable duration of grazing (9 h/d). This practice maintains milk production and provides a steady income to the farmer. It appears therefore appropriate to support the co-design of feeding systems integrating forage crops, grazing and moderate use of concentrate feed. The improvement of dairy cow diet appears to be mainly motivated by the organization of the collection and the incentives offered to farmers. In order to amplify the dynamics of agro-ecological intensification of milk production, and in particular this type of dairy cows feeding system, upstream operators of the local dairy value chain could develop an economic model that creates more incentives for the farmers.
- Subjects
DAIRY cattle
- Publication
Cahiers Agriculture, 2022, Vol 31, p1
- ISSN
1166-7699
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1051/cagri/2022006