Dairy cattle performance and technology adoption constraints in Tigray, Northern Ethiopia

Different dairy production technologies and practices have been introduced to support milk producers. Some of them have been adopted and used by producers, while the majority remains unused. Almost no studies have investigated the adoption of improved dairy husbandry and technologies by smallholder dairy farmers in the study area. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the performance of dairy cattle and technology adoption constraints. Three milk production systems (MPSs), urban, peri-urban and rural were selected for the study and represented by Wukro, Agula and Genfel, respectively. The MPSs were selected on the basis of their potential in dairy production. A total of 224 dairy producers were selected via a simple random sampling method after the MPSs were stratified into adopters and non-adopters of dairy technologies in each MPS. Data were collected using semi-structured questionnaires through face-to-face interviews. The overall age at first service (AFS), age at first calving (AFC), and calving interval (CI) were 20.02 ± 0.29, 34.30 ± 0.24 and 11.95 ± 0.19 months, respectively, for crossbred cows in urban, peri-urban and rural MPSs. These values were 31.55 ± 0.24, 45.14 ± 0.21 and 15.09 ± 0.19 for local breed cows, respectively. The average daily milk yield (ADMY) of crossbred cows was 8.26, 8.31 and 7.05 liters (L) in urban, peri-urban and rural areas, respectively. The ADMY of local breed cows statistically (p < 0.001) differed among the MPSs. Cows had statistically (p < 0.001) better performance among the adopters than among the non-adopters. The mean lactation length (LL) in adopters was longer than that in non-adopters by 26.1 days for crossbred and 23.4 days for local breed cows. The mean lactation milk yield (LMY) of local breed cows was 355, 294 and 260 L in urban, peri-urban and rural areas, respectively, whereas it was 2374, 2402 and 2015 L in urban, peri-urban and rural areas for crossbred cows, respectively. A high price and low supply of concentrate feed, a shortage of green feed and green fodder and financial limitations were the major feeding constraints in the study area. Extension services and the use of improved technologies should be intensified in MPSs, particularly in rural MPSs and non-adopters, to increase the performance of dairy cattle.