Abstract:
Small Ruminants production, producer’s traits preferences and marketing system in agro- ecologies
(AEZs) of Ada Barga and Ejere districts were under taken to characterize production system,
reproduction performance, traits preferred for breeding as well as marketing and to document
constraints of central highland sheep and goat in its environment. These two districts were selected
based on potential for small ruminant production. Two districts stratified into highland (HL), midland
(ML) and lowland (LL) agro ecologies and 180 households 69 from HL, 74 from ML and 37 from LL
were purposively selected for this study. Detailed structured questionnaires, respondent interviews
and FGD were employed as sampling technique. Results revealed that the overall mean family size,
cultivated land, grass land per households in mean (SD) were 7.1(2.4), 2.4(1.7) and 0.7(0.6)
respectively. Both sheep and goat were significantly affected by AEZs. The average mean of sheep and
goat size per household were 10.2, 4.3, 1.3 and 0.5, 5.5, 7.5 in HL, ML and LL, respectively. The
overall objective of both sheep and goat rearing across all AEZs were source of income was ranked
first. The major availability of feed was natural pasture ranked first with total index 0.96 and 0.49 in
wet and dry season, respectively. The overall proportions of respondents were grazing sheep with
other livestock (32.8%). Only 20.6% and 30.6 of the respondents practiced separation of new born
kids and lambs, respectively from their dams or other flocks. The overall of age at first lambing (AFL)
/ age at first kidding (AFK), weaning age, slaughter age, age at sexual maturity of male (ASMM),
reproductive life span of both sheep and goat were significantly affected by AEZs. The overall mean of
slaughter age and ASMM of sheep was 6.43, 8.91 and 6.27, 8.39 for goat, respectively. High intensive
kidding and lambing months was April to June. The effective population size (Ne) and level of
inbreeding coefficient (ΔF) in HL (103.77 and 0.005 for sheep whereas 3.85 and 0.129 for goat,
respectively) during mixed Feed scarcity was ranked first for reasons of culling sheep and goats
in HL (14.4%) and ML (10.6%). Own grazing and community grazing land were utilized by
higher percent of respondents in LL AEZ compared to HL and ML AEZs. Body conformation
and color were ranked first and second with an overall average index (0.51, 0.19) and (0.48, 0.33) for
ram and buck selection respectively. Majority of respondents sell small ruminants aged 06 months –
01 year and adult (> 01 year) in both sexes (male and female) across all three AEZs. Low start up cost
(25.0%) and multi species grazing (20.6%) were found to be suitable for sheep and goat breeding
opportunities. Diseases, feed shortage and water shortage were major constraints ranked first, second
and third with an overall index of 0.40, 0.20 and 0.16 for sheep and 0.35, 0.31 and 0.13 for goat,
respectively. Addressed constraint should be addressed to increase productive and reproductive of
small ruminants.
