Reproductive and Productive Performance of Fogera Cattle in Lake Tana Watershed, North Western Amhara, Ethiopia

A study was undertaken in three districts (Dembia, Libo Kemkem and Fogera) in north eastern Amhara Ethiopia. The objective was to evaluate the productive and reproductive performance of Fogera cattle in the Lake Tana watershed at smallholder farmers' level. The study areas were purposively selected based on their potentiality of Fogera cattle population. A total of 126 households were considered. A cross-sectional survey and structured questionnaire were used for the study. The data were analysed using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) version 20 (SPSS 2001). The overall reported age at sexual maturity, age at first calving, lactation length and calving interval were 47.24±0.85, 59.90+0.83, 10.48+0.17 and 25.52+0.52 months, respectively. The reproductive life span was 11.30+0.17 years. The age at puberty and reproductive life span for Fogera male cattle was 48.87+0.77 months and 6.79+0.1 years. The overall mean of lactation length of a cow and lactation length of first parity were 10.48±0.17 and 10.44±0.15, respectively. The reported lactation length of the cow were less than 6 months (2.4%), 6-9 months (32.4%), 10-12 months (63.7%) and greater than 12 months (1.5%).The calving intervals (CI) of cow were 12 months (2.8%), 18 months (10%), 24 months (67.8%) and 36 months (19.5%). The second and third parity of early, mid and late stage daily milk yield of Fogera cattle were (3.31±0.12, 3.40±0.14 and 2.41±0.16), (4.29±0.16, 3.52±0.12 and 3.39±0.14) and (4.98±0.18, 3.8±0.13 and 2.81±0.14), respectively. The overall early, mid and late stages of daily milk yield were 4.19±0.15, 3.57±0.13 and 2.87±0.15 kg, respectively. The major constraints were shortage of feed, disease outbreak and occurrences of drought, shortage of water during winter/healthy water, flooding during summer season, market and conflict by grazing land.