Dairy Cattle Breeding Practices and Farmers’ Trait Preferences in Sidama Zone, Southern Ethiopia

The study was aimed to assess indigenous dairy cattle breeding practices and major trait preferences in selecting better dairy cows in Sidama zone. A total of 120 households from high land and midland area were randomly selected for household survey. Data was analyzed using SPSS version 20. The average cattle holding per household was a significant (P<0.05) difference among the study sites. Higher number of cattle per household was obtained from highland (2.71±1.23) site. The average number of cows per household was significantly (P<0.01) higher in highland (6.73±3.93 than midland (3.23±1.6). The main breeding objective of cattle was income generation, saving and meat purpose. Uncontrolled/natural mating (69%) was dominated, but AI existed (13.5%) in small frequencies in both study sites. Majority of respondents do not own their own breeding bulls but rely on bulls owned by their neighbors. Animal productivity was preferred by most of the participants of the study due to better expression of the dairy traits. Among these, the major dairy traits were milk, fertility of animals, growth rate and low feeding behavior with the indices value of 0.3, 0.27, 0.21 and 0.1, respectively. The major problems for dairy cattle productively were feed shortage, diseases, and repeat breeder cows. In conclusion, dairy cattle productivity was limited by constraints namely uncontrolled breeding system, shortage of feed, and higher prevalence of repeat breeder cows. Therefore, to improve the productivity of dairy cattle, breeding practices use through artificial insemination would be the best recommended practice in the study areas and beyond.