National indaba needed to save livestock

AS the effects of the drought continue and statistics are collated, farmers endure the agony of losses with a very real possibility of a complete wipe out of the herd.

Just to contextualise the effects of a drought to non-livestock persons, the situation gets so dire and helpless that it becomes very common to find dried up emaciated carcasses littering the bare veld.

Farmers lose the energy and zeal to go and help lift recumbent animals that are failing to rise on their own in the veld. They just leave them there to wither and die. Others get stuck in the mud of drying up dams. They have no energy to pluck themselves from the muddy dams yet they need to drink regardless of the death trap situation. There are plenty bones of dead cadavers on the bare veld and many more bones in the muddy dams and the peripheries. The vultures are constantly circling the sky having a field feast from this time of abundance! Yet the real pain is in losing in calf animals as this is actually a loss of two animals.

In calf cows and heifers are usually the first ones to succumb due to the heavy nutritional demand of the pregnancy especially in the last trimester.

It is very common during such a time for a heavily pregnant cow to become recumbent and fail to rise on its own and subsequently the calf dies first inside the cow and invariably the cow follows in a day or two unless if the dead calf is removed from the cow by experienced veterinary personnel. In some cases, the cow somehow manages to soldier through the nutritional stress and calve down.

This is also not without incidence as the cow will be too weak to push the calf out and hence needs to be assisted. This is a calving process that is usually bedevilled with challenges as in most cases the dam dies after calving down, presenting the farmer with a dual pain of losing his cow and that of nursing an orphaned calf in a drought situation.

Ordinarily nursing an orphaned calf would not be a mammoth task if there are other cows with calves on foot. One would just do what is known as fostering, where the orphaned calf would suckle from other dams with calves. Now this is a huge task during a drought as the cows with calves on foot are already burdened and are barely coping even under supplementary feeding conditions. I am fully aware that the extension message for drought coping is destock, cull, sell and procure stock feed to supplement during the dry season. This message obviously either neglects the effect of lack of drinking water on animals or it somehow assumes that there is enough drinking water despite a threeyear back-to-back drought.

Right now, we have some areas that still have not yet received significant rains to develop pastures. This means even that farmer who had procured supplementary feeds finds himself being called up to stretch a little further than the originally anticipated months.

This can be financially painful. What further makes the drought effect to be painful on livestock farmers is the handsoff approach by the authorities. With regard to crop production a national drought is met with swift and very decisive action such as provision of grain to the affected community for food security purpose.

This is followed by a provision of inputs during the follow up agricultural season just to jump start the farmers who were affected in the previous season. This kind of intervention is hardly extended to livestock farmers firstly because of some warped definition of food security which does not recognise ownership livestock as being food secure hence when you lose your livestock due to drought somehow that does not translate to food insecurity to the powers that be! One would expect a more decisive intervention to the livestock drought crisis, firstly to alleviate or mitigate against the effects of drought on livestock farmers and secondly to help them bounce back after a devastating drought like the one experienced this year.

The private sector should also come in because the demise of the livestock farmers has a direct bearing on their business. It will not be a bad idea for example to abattoir operators and meat wholesalers to come in with a heifer loan scheme to farmers just to make sure the supply base of the value chain remains stable. It is a no-brainer that if livestock farmers fold because of a drought, the apex players of the value chain such as abattoirs and meat wholesalers will also fold.

I submit therefore in my closing arguments that the country needs a national indaba on drought mitigation measures for livestock farmers.

Uyabonga umntakaMaKhumalo. Feedback mazikelana@gmail.com cell 0772851725