Assessing on farm feed storage and possible sources of contamination among selected farms in Gayaza,Wakiso District

Abstract

The resolution for taking up this study was owing to the fact that nowadays most livestock farmers are complaining of serious losses resulting from over expenditure on feed input and less or no returns on output. Animal feed takes the largest portion as compared to other inputs. And it has been brought to attention that one of the major problems related with animal feeds is their storage and high rate of contamination. There for, I found it wise to carry out a research on on farm animal feed storage and the possible sources of contamination among selected farms in Gayaza, Wakiso district. The data was collected using questionnaires and interviewing methods. A total of 45 livestock farmers who dealing in different animal production line I.e. poultry farmers, cattle farmers(cows), piggery farmers plus goat and sheep farmers were interviewed. The collected data from the field was analyzed using SPSS software and descriptive statistics such as percentages, frequencies, distribution tables and mean were used to display the different proportions of the results that were collected from the field. It was discovered from the field that male are the most owners of the livestock farms with 73% this due to culture where by a man is considered to be head and owner of resource at home. Most people who were involved in farming were between age of 35-50 with 40% and most type of animals kept were poultry with 28.9%, piggery with 24.4%, cattle with 26.7%, goats with 11.1% and sheep with 8.9%. The cause of that kind of distribution was hoped to be due to limited space because of urban setting. Most kept animal feeds were mash with 33.3%, fresh leaves with 24.4%, food leftovers with 11.1%, silage and hydroponics with 6.7%, pellets and hay with 6.7%. Most animal feed contaminants were found to be water/moisture with 28.9%, environment with 28.9%, rodents and insects with13.3% air with 8.9 and animals with 6.7%.