Ankole cattle face extinction

Sep 04, 2007

Uganda’s Ankole cattle, famous for its high resistance to disease and drought, could be extinct within two decades, international experts have warned.

By Josephine Maseruka

Uganda’s Ankole cattle, famous for its high resistance to disease and drought, could be extinct within two decades, international experts have warned.

“Scientists predict that Uganda’s indigenous Ankole cattle, famous for their graceful and gigantic horns, could face extinction within 20 years because they are being rapidly supplanted by Holstein-Friesians, which produce more milk,” said a statement issued by CGIAR.

“During a recent drought, some farmers that had kept their hardy Ankole were able to walk them long distances to water sources, while those who had traded the Ankole for imported breeds lost their entire herds.”

There is a tendency in Uganda to replace the low-yielding indigenous cattle with cross-breeds and exotic cattle.

This is contained in a report by scientists from the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), which was presented at an international conference in Interlaken, Switzerland, on Monday.

But scientists have expressed concern about what they call a ‘livestock meltdown’, not only in Uganda but also in other developing countries.

“There is a livestock meltdown underway across Africa, Asia and Latin America,” Carlos Sere of the International Livestock Research Institute told the 300 participants at the conference.

“Valuable breeds are disappearing at an alarming rate. In many cases we will not even know the true value of an existing breed until it is already gone. This is why we need to act now to conserve what is left by putting them in gene banks.”

At the conference, FAO, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, warned that over-reliance on a few breeds of farm animal species, like the high-milk yielding Holstein-Friesian cow, egg-laying white leghorn chickens and fast-growing large white pigs, was causing the loss of an average of one livestock breed every month.

But Dr. Nicholas Kauta, the commissioner in charge of livestock in Uganda, yesterday refuted the findings on the Ankole cattle.

“The extinction of any livestock breed is impossible because Uganda is conserving livestock genes at the National Animal Genetic Resource Centre and Data Bank in Entebbe,” he told The New Vision.

“Uganda has a clear policy on conserving all good genetic resources of animals. It spells out selective use of genetic resources. This means we should at anytime decide to either reduce or increase the use of any breed.”

The commissioner said Uganda’s cattle population stood at about six million, of which four million were indigenous breeds, the majority of them Ankole cattle.

The Zebu cattle from northern and eastern Uganda and the Nganda cattle from the central region were other common local breeds, Kauta noted.

Fresian cows were the most common among the exotic and cross-breeds, estimated at two million, he said.

“When you consider the percentages of the indigenous and exotic breeds, there is no way our local breeds can become extinct because the gene bank has been set up with a good breeding policy for the present and the future.”
On pigs, he said all animals in Uganda were exotic.

Research groups like ILRI surveyed farm animals in 169 countries.

Nearly 70% of the entire world’s remaining unique livestock breeds were found in developing countries.

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