Zero-Grazing Practices and its Level of Adoption by the Livestock Owners of Ethiopia

Abstract

This study attempted to assess the status of adoption of zerograzing in Tahtay Koraro, Medebay Zana and Asgede Tsibilaworedas of Tigray region, Ethiopia. The study was conducted in three districts of Medebayzana, TahtayKoraro and Asgede Tsimibla Districts of Tigray Region. Random sampling was used to select 117 sample respondents in six Tabias. The main method of data collection was interview with sample respondents to get firsthand information for the study. Additionally, key informants interview was also employed to supplement the data collected from the sample respondents. Descriptive statistics like mean, frequency and percentage were used to analyze the socioeconomic and institutional characteristics of the respondents. Likert scale used to analyze the perception of rural households towards zerograzing practice. The survey indicated that most of the respondents perceived that zerograzing has better performance in comparison with the remaining other economic subsectors. The findings have also shown that majority (72.6%) of respondents practice zerograzing while 27.4% respondents are non-adopters of zerograzing. This indicates that some of the respondents are still practicing free grazing practices in the study area because of zerograzing demands more inputs, the lack of timely and limited availability of the animal feed and feed resources. Therefore destocking of local animals and awareness creation to community about the importance and management aspects of communal grazing land is important to improve the adoption of zero-grazing practice