Animal Husbandry: An Idea Gaining Ground!

For villagers in the rural Luangwa Valley, protein is hard to come by. Growing a more diversified array of crops to include soya and ground nuts certainly helps, but it’s the desire for meat protein that drives villagers into the bush to hunt for game meat. Most villagers can’t afford cattle, which are also attractive to dangerous predators and prohibited in many parts of the Game Management Areas. Poultry and goats represent small bodied, affordable, sustainable protein producers that can be managed on little in the way of expensive feed and without extensive overgrazing.

Poultry Production

Small-scale poultry keeping is an important component of rural Zambian life. Poultry are a source of animal protein, a source of family income and serve functions within the traditional culture. Rural Zambians living around the Luangwa Valley typically keep between 10-15 free-range chickens for these purposes. However, poultry-keeping has not been a dependable source of food and income due to high mortality rates that can eradicate entire flocks. Improvement of poultry production would result in increased food security, thereby decreasing reliance on poaching and other harmful practices. Villagers could also possibly sell excess animals and eggs through the COMACO system.

Research done in 2006 showed that infectious diseases such as fowl pox, salmonellosis, fowl cholera, and Newcastle disease; external and internal parasites; predation from wildcats, snakes, birds, etc; and a lack of knowledge of proper husbandry techniques were all significantly reducing the productivity of poultry raising in South Luangwa. Of these, Newcastle Disease was determined to be a major cause of the high poultry mortality experienced yearly from October-December.

Based on these observations, COMACO began a program of Newcastle’s Vaccination, in which lost-cost vaccines are made available at local Depots and CTCs. Field days and extension officers teach the value of vaccination along with other aspects of good chicken housing and care.

Goat Production

In specific areas where there is minimal risk of geographic overlap between goats and wildlife, COMACO seeks to improve goat husbandry and market support for goats to promote alternative meat sources to wildlife as well as alternative income sources to poaching. Lundazi and Nyimba, areas well away from game management areas that border the part, suffer from the effects of poor livelihood skills and low market opportunities. These areas are ideal for goat husbandry for a number of reasons: minimal conflict with wildlife, high accessibility to potential markets, high market value, and high level of producer interest, including local hunters seeking alternatives to poaching.

Constraints in developing goats as a more valued source of income as well as protein food source include undeveloped market links, poor breeding stock, poor husbandry skills, lack of supply of goats for interested producers, lack of skills to develop secondary products (e.g., tanning of hides).

COMACO seeks to help hunters become model goat producers to fully benefit from these markets and reduce community tendencies to exploit wildlife as a basis for poverty reduction. These efforts will also target other households who have adopted charcoal-making to reduce this destructive land use practice of tree-clearing. One bag of charcoal earns a producer approximately $1.20 at considerable cost of labor and environmental damage to watershed and wildlife production.

In 2004 COMACO through program leadership by WCS undertook interventions to demonstrate the potential value of proper goat management and local improvements in goat marketing through the CTC. These activities included purchase and delivery of breeding stock (approximately 200 animals) to new goat producers, training of goat producer groups on improved husbandry practices, development of improved market links and logistics for buying, collecting and selling goats in bulk to high-paying markets, trade agreements between CTC and goat producers to adopt conservation practices and group by-laws in support of wildlife habitat and wildlife production in adjacent wildlife areas, and a baseline study on veterinary services needed in these areas to maintain healthy, productive goat populations and low-cost solutions for sustaining these services.

The estimated cost for providing a breeding pair to each household (purchase and delivery cost) was about $55 per household. COMACO established holding pens at designated depots in the selected areas where goats will be introduced. We supported training in husbandry and extension services to monitor the use of these practices as well as the development of producer groups in compliance with group by-laws that support basic needs of wildlife conservation and watershed protection.

It is important to point out that wildlife resources are regarded by COMACO as a very important resource for local consumption and for legal meat and skin sales. Current policies in Zambia, however, do not support local user rights to utilize wildlife surplus populations in this way, despite well-demonstrated evidence that local communities do contribute significantly to increased wildlife production. COMACO in partnership with the community producer groups and community-based leadership institutions will continue to advocate for changes in these policies. Such policies are essential to resist local demand for domestic livestock in wildlife areas, which would increase the potential for conflicts and would ultimately lead to lowered income opportunities for local communities and the nation as a whole.