Influence of selected coping strategies on availability of feeds among smallholder dairy cattle farmers in Trans-Nzoia County, Kenya

Abstract

In Trans-Nzoia county smallholder dairy cattle farmers are constrained by feeds shortage despite livestock extension agents and other stakeholders disseminating various coping strategies to farmers. Due to this, it became necessary to determine the influence of selected coping strategies to overcome non availability of feeds among smallholder dairy cattle farmers in Trans-Nzoia County. The selected coping strategies that were investigated are crop stovers preparation strategies and forage conservation strategies. The study used cross sectional survey research design. The target population was all dairy cattle farmers and the accessible population was 13,971 smallholder dairy cattle farmers in the study area. Using proportionate stratified random sampling121smallholder dairy cattle farmers were sampled from Kaplamai, Kwanza and Waitaluk wards in Trans-Nzoia County. Data was collected using questionnaire. The instrument was pilot tested in Kimilili ward of Kimilili Sub-county in Bungoma County using 30 randomly selected smallholder dairy cattle farmers. The instrument validation was done by the supervisors from the department of Agricultural Education and Extension. A Cronbach alpha reliability coefficient of 0.8 was attained. Descriptive statistics and multiple regression were used for data analysis respectively. The null hypotheses was at 0.05 alpha level of significance. The study established that feeds availability to farmers is low during both rainy and dry seasons of the year but much lower during the dry season. The results from this study show that both crop stovers preparation strategy and forage conservation strategy do not significantly influence availability of feeds. Farmers used the following feeds; forage (98.3%), hay (51.2%), silage (37.2%), crop stovers (77.7%), cereal by products and legume crops (14.9%). It was noted that 26.4% of dairy farmer purchase feeds to supplement what they have from their farms both the dry and wet seasons. In addition, feeds availability was in abundance in wet season than the dry season. In reference to the findings, this study concluded that most farmers tend to conserve less forage when feeds are available. Therefore, farmers should do more feed conservation during wet season. This study recommends that the County government and other stakeholders to continue capacity building smallholder dairy cattle farmers on crop stovers preparation strategies to improve on the amounts available for usage during feeds scarcity. It also recommends the extension agents to capacity build smallholder dairy cattle farmers to conserve more forage during the rainy season when they in plenty for usage during feeds scarcity period.