Category: POULTRY AND LIVESTOCK

Botswana has resumed beef exports to the European Union two months after suspending sales because of an outbreak of foot and mouth disease. In August, Botswana suspended all live cattle and beef exports following an outbreak of foot and mouth in the northeast of the southern African country. The ban was partially lifted in September,…

Back in 1981, when brothers Ian and Rob Butt established their Butt Farming business in KwaZulu-Natal’s Kamberg Valley, they could scarcely have imagined that their initial commercial pig production operation of 200 breeding sows and mostly own-built infrastructure would grow to become a trend-setting piggery of 3 100 high-performance Topigs Norsvin breeding sows. Now semi-retired,…

Aquaponics, a subset of the aquaculture industry, has grown dramatically in recent years. Most systems are hobby-scale to minor commercial scale projects, and there are few if any large ventures producing both fish and plants on a scale typical of traditional agriculture. READ Know your Tilapia strains However, several producers now send regular shipments of product…

Mention the words Nile tilapia and most warm-water aquaculturalists get a misty-eyed and wistful look. This is because the species Oreochromis niloticus (Nile tilapia) has become the species of choice for global commercial aquaculture. In much the same way we farm chickens, which have been genetically developed to produce higher yields of eggs and meat,…

Cage culture of tilapia is becoming increasingly successful in Bangladesh, according to that country’s national department of fisheries. Simple 6m x 3m x 2m cages, constructed of bamboo, netting and plastic drum floats, are placed in large water bodies such as dams and rivers with slow-flowing, clean water. READ Small aquaculture systems: the simpler, the better!…

Anybody who believes in the motto ‘go big or go home’ has clearly never met 28-year-old Clive Tigere. He is going big in his own home town of Louis Trichardt, Limpopo. Tigere and his mother, Dr Caroline Tigere, started a broiler operation back in 2011, when he was still in high school. “Things have changed…

As more and more producers realise the benefits of using large populations of micro-organisms on their farms, so the number of different ways to apply these micro-organisms grows. With the development of effective micro-organisms (EM) in the form of inoculants, these organisms are moving beyond crop farms and being used in livestock concerns, where they…

When you produce large numbers of chickens on a tight margin, the potential for sudden huge losses, in terms of both birds and money, is a daily reality. Dale Shepherd, owner of Plaston Chicken Farms near White River, is keenly aware of this, which is why he focuses intently on maintaining the birds’ health at…

Emmanuel Gumede (26) is a determined young man. He is currently employed full- time as a call-centre supervisor, but his heart lies in fulfilling the big dreams that he has for his 18-month-old, small-scale broiler farming business. It was only in March 2019 that Gumede began a small production trial in his family’s backyard with…

Having grown up on a maize and cattle farm in Viljoenskroon in the Free State, Lynne Griesel understands the work ethic required to make a success of farming. “It’s early mornings and late nights. Success comes with constant hard work, day in and day out. It’s not about working hard for just a season and…