Development of Endiisa Decision Support Tool for Improved Feeding of Dairy Cattle in Uganda

Efforts to improve livestock feeding in Uganda have made great strides in identifying nutritious feed resources for cattle. These feed resources include pasture grasses and legumes, leguminous shrubs and multi-purpose trees, crop residues and agro-industrial by-products. Despite this knowledge and, in some cases, use of the appropriate feed resources, milk production on dairy farms has remained low, in the range of 2–5 L per cow per day. This poor performance indicates a gap in the knowledge disseminated to farmers with regard to cattle feeding. One major knowledge gap in Uganda was that farmers did not know the quantities of feeds that would adequately meet the nutritional requirements of their animals. As a result, the farmers only provided 59 and 36% of the required metabolisable energy and crude protein, respectively, to their animals. Thus it was necessary to develop a mechanism by which farmers could establish adequate nutritional feed quantities for their cattle even when they combine a variety of feeds. One practical means of achieving this was through the use of a decisionsupport tool (DST), which was one of the major outputs of this research. In conclusion, the study provided information on the low status of dairy cattle feeding in the central zone. The DST that was developed and tested led to improved cattle feeding status, and increased milk production by 24%. The tool, available on the website of the National Agricultural Research Organisation (NARO-Uganda), should be recommended for use by farmers, researchers, trainers and policy-makers. A mechanism should be established for regular updating of the DST to include new feed resources and incorporate emerging information.