THE Department of Animal Husbandry services, Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, alongside Real People Concept Cattle Hub, in a bid to improve livestock production particularly in the area of cattle, recently put together a two-week intensive training for artificial inseminators.
Speaking with the Nigerian Tribune shortly after the presentation of certificates to participants drawn from Kano, Taraba, Niger, Oyo, Bauchi and Katsina states, at Real People Concept Cattle Hub in Iwo, Osun State,Head, Animal Breeding and Conservation, Department of Animal Husbandry Services, Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, Mr Abdulraheem Yahaya Onipe, noted that the training is part of efforts to improve the national livestock breed especially the dairy cattle.
“Our dairy cattle have no genetic potential to produce more than one to two litres of milk per day. But we are trying to upgrade and in the process of upgrading, we are going to need artificial inseminators. These artificial inseminators would carry the business to the dairy farmers to help in inseminating their animals.
“The issue of artificial insemination is to help regulate breeding whereby you can breed your animals about 100 of them at the same time, they can also calve around the same time then you can feed around the same time. It helps in the planning of your farm.”
Commenting on plans by the ministry not to allow the knowledge acquired by these artificial inseminators to end at the venue of the training, Onipe said:” The ministry has procured motorcycle for each of them. Everyone of them will get complete mobile artificial insemination kit which they can use in the process of doing their work.
“We have also deposited 135 litres nitrogen tanks for the storage of semen in their states. So, with these they can easily access semen; they have motorbike to take them to wherever they are going to do the insemination. They have the AI kit with which to do the job, so they are completely equipped to do the job.”
Also speaking with the Nigerian Tribune, Managing Director, Real People Concept, Mr Tunmise Olagbaju, said:”The Federal Government has been involved in a lot of intervention programmes on livestock breed improvement and the department of animal husbandry services has engaged us in the last two weeks to train inseminators drawn from six states across the country.
“When people talk about artificial insemination, they focus more on the dropping of the semen and that is the insemination itself, but they do not talk about other aspects that surround the insemination like checking the fertility of the female, checking the time of insemination to ovulation, checking the quality of the semen and of course building the capacity of the artificial inseminators. All these we have been able to let the participants at this training know.”
Speaking on behalf of the participants, Dr Ari Abdulrasaq, commended the Federal Government and Real People Cattle Hub.
The Training is very rich, the resource persons were well coordinated and I think it is the right step in the right direction, because it will go a long way in addressing the issue of farmers/herders crisis in the country if truly what we will learn will be put into practice.
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