Farmers' practices and strategies for ruminants' supplementation in mixed crop-livestock farming systems in the central plateau and north of Burkina Faso

摘要

With the purpose to understand the farmers' practices and strategies for ruminants supplementation, mixed crop-livestock farms have been surveyed in three agro-ecological zones of Burkina Faso. The results obtained indicated that lactating females'supplementation is almost permanent whatever be the period of the year, but the objectives vary according to the seasons. In general, animal supplementation during the dry season deals with four major objectives: (i) incomes generation, (ii) care of draught animal, (iii) productivity, and (iv) risks management for animal losses (thefts and mortalities). When the nutritional stress becomes important, incomes generation gives up progressively the ground to the risk management. The supplementation strategyrelies on a maximum valorization (70-80 percent of the cases) of feeds produced in the farm or collected in the bush. Farmers also purchase feeds (salt, cereals bran, agro-industrial by-products) in cash and, livestock remains the frequent source of funds. The results of the study suggest that the development of feeding systems for these mixed crop-livestock farms would focus on alternatives considering the variability of farmers' objectives by the time, and being built on feed that can be easily mobilized by farmers, and offering a low cash cost price, for example green forage and fruit of shrubs rich in energy and nitrogen.