Utilizing the Right Season to Start Cow Fattening to Ensure Steady Cash Flow throughout the Year for the small and medium scale Farmer

Recognizing the right season of the year to start cow fattening is pivotal to the success of the cattle farmer. And it’s a key factor in ensuring steady cash flow throughout the year for the ambitious farmer.

The rainy season is a very busy period of the year for the farmer from the onset of the season starting from land clearing, preparation, and tillage, making of ridges, etc.  The farmer is engrossed in various farming activities.

In most parts of sub-Sahara Africa especially West Africa, Nigeria in particular in the central states or the middle belt. Where a lot of farming activities take place from the cultivation of yams, rice, groundnut, cowpea, soybeans, and cassava, etc.

These are the major crops cultivated in the middle belt of Nigeria that provide a lot of cash to the small and medium scale farmers of the middle belt of the country.

Cows kept at home for cow fattening

A cow like this left in the open to graze is expose to health hazards e.g from ticks and worms etc.

Recommended for you:

How Cow Fattening Can Make You Rich

Yam Tubers, Production, Cultivation, and Uses

Rice Plant, Production, Cultivation, and Uses

Season of Harvest with More Cash in the Hands of Farmers

After the harvest, by the end of the farming season, you will see a lot of farmers with enough cash in their possession.

For most farmers, this is a period of the year for them to renovate their dilapidated houses, build new houses, buy new motorcycles, cars, etc.

And the young men amongst them getting married with the less ambitious ones among them divorcing and adding new wives (brides), while the more ambitious ones are reinvesting, expanding.

And trying other farming enterprises such as starting cow fattening, and other livestock production to ensure more cash flow and continuity.

In most parts of West Africa especially in the middle belt of Nigeria, the year is almost equally divided into two exact parts having both the wet and dry seasons having six months each.

Fatten cows taken to the local farmers market

READ ALSO: How to Engage In Profitable Sheep Fattening For Maximum Profits

This is a tremendous advantage for the farmer to grow his crops during the rainy season and keep some livestock for fattening during the dry season.

It’s a known fact that most farm animals do very well during the dry season because of less incidence of pathogenic organisms.

Personally inspecting and interacting with the locals, in a rural village on how they engage in cow fattening, you can see the heap of hay on the background

Starting cow fattening during the dry season

Cow fattening is simply buying a thin and emaciated cow for the sole purpose of making a profit. By treating the cow, feeding it properly and thus allowing it to gain weight, becoming healthy and good looking in order to attract good market price.

Young emaciated calves for cow fattening, they are to be treated, deworm and fed properly for optimal weight gain.

Recommended for you:

How to Prevent and Control Livestock Diseases and Pests.

Planning a Livestock Farm and how to Make It Profitable

Cattle Rearing, Maximizing Your Profit through Minimizing Your Cost of Production

Availability of more cow feed such as hay during the onset of dry season immediately after harvest. Its an opportunity for the farmer to buy and stockpile his cow feed, because they are cheap at that period of the year.

Starting cow fattening during the dry season comes with the following advantages

• It’s an avenue to explore other aspects of farming such as livestock production.

• It’s a means of generating more income for the farmer through livestock production.

• By starting and engaging in cow fattening during the dry season, the farmer ensures steady cash and continuity of his farming enterprising to the next farming season.

• By engaging and starting cow fattening during the dry season the farmer is thus saving a lot of money for the upcoming cropping season. He will have enough money for the cultivation of his crops, money for land preparation, money to buy improved seedlings and herbicides and pesticides, etc.

• The onset of the dry season is the period of the year, where you have a bountiful harvest of crops such as groundnut and cowpea. The hay from such crops is stored in large quantities for cow fattening. Yam and cassava peels are readily available during this season which is also good for feeding your cow.

• Maize bran (Dusa) is a product of maize milling, are readily available during this period of the year, they are dry and free from mycotoxins due to less moisture in the year. They are often mixed with cattle manufactured formulated concentrate and other by-products of crop processing to produce a very rich diet for profitable cow fattening.

• Where there are fewer security concerns a local farmer can keep his cow under a tree shade or a makeshift shelter, less money is spent in providing shade and structure for your cattle. Therefore the problem of leaking shades is nonexistence.

Recommended for you:

The Health Impacts of Ticks on Livestock Production, It’s Control and Characteristics.

How to Treat Louse and Mites in Your Poultry and Farm Animals

Brooding Day-old Chicks During Wet and Raining Season Successfully

More Advantages of Starting Cow Fattening During the Dry Season

• Starting cow fattening during the dry season helps in keeping ticks at bay, mostly cattle get ticks by grazing, foraging, and moving around by keeping your animal in a dry and confined environment helps in protecting your cow from these economically destabilizing cattle pests. When not treated, it has the capacity to suck a cow dry which eventually leads to death.

• Ticks are more prevalent during the rainy season too.

• With the onset of the dry season, you have less incidence of bacteria and pathogenic organism due to less moisture in the environment which is a good breeding environment for bacteria.

Young calves kept in a dry environment

Read Caring For Goats during the Raining Season, Best Strategy to Employ.

• The hooves of your cattle are healthier with complete dryness.

• Most products of grains milling are used as animal feeds. With high relative humidity especially during the rainy season, this presents a great danger to farm animals (cow inclusive). These may lead to the formation of molds which is a good breeding ground for bacteria which is dangerous to farm animals. In the dry season, you have low relative humidity less moisture in the air. Which is good for feed storage.

• Lumpy skin disease (LSD) is a devastating disease of cattle caused by a capripox virus. Is an infectious, eruptive, occasionally fatal disease of cattle characterized by nodules on the skin and other parts of the body it is usually more prevalent during the wet season, the more reason why dry season cow fattening should be practiced.