Ensuring animal welfare is a critical priority for livestock farmers in the face of urbanization. Rapid urban growth increases the demand for animal products but decreases availability of arable land around cities with negative implications for animal feed production. In urbanizing regions, livestock keepers resort to common pool resources for animal nutrition. Yet, the repercussions of urbanization on the quality of common pool feed resources, animal health, production and product safety, remain unstudied. Additionally, ...

The regional population growth in West Africa, and especially its urban centers, will bring about new and critical challenges for urban development policy, especially in terms of ensuring food security and providing employment for the growing population. (Peri-) urban livestock and vegetable production systems, which can contribute significantly to these endeavours, are limited by various constraints, amongst them limited access to expensive production factors and their (in)efficient use. To achieve sustainable ...

The current study investigated the possibilities of producing manure that meets the specific requirements of irrigated organic cropping systems under arid sub-tropical conditions. Therefore, two trials with goats were conducted that investigated the impact of control diets on their digestibility and faecal concentration with the goal to lowerfaecal concentration levels and meet the requirements of irrigated organic cropping. Feeding ruminants with condensed tannins (CT) will lower ruminal protein degradation, ...

The (peri-) urban demand for food of animal origin is increasing in sub-Saharan Africa as a result of the rapidly growing population and urbanisation. Livestock production in the vicinity of West African cities is well established but currently undergoes changes triggered by key transforming factors such as access to resources, production management related to famers' knowledge or know-how, increasing demand for livestock and/or animal products, policies and the legal framework in which livestock production systems ...

The study aims to get deeper insight into the highly extensive system of animal husbandry in the Mahafaly region of southwestern Madagascar. It tries to understand the major drivers for pastoral dynamics, land and resource use along a gradient in altitude and vegetation to consider the area’s high spatial and temporal heterogeneity. The study also analyzes the reproductive performance of local livestock as well as the owners’ culling strategies to determine herd dynamics, opportunities for economic growth, and future ...

This PhD thesis focuses on current livelihoods of agro-pastoral livestock keepers, their animal nutrition, herd and rangeland management strategies. It thereby aims to contribute to sustainable rangeland management, livestock production and household income in Qinghe county of the Chinese Altay Mountain region, located in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, PR China. In its first part the study characterizes the socio-economic situation and agricultural practices of agro-pastoralists through structured household ...

Climate change and variability in sub-Saharan West Africa is expected to have negative consequences for crop and livestock farming due to the strong dependence of these sectors on rainfall and natural resources, and the low adaptive capacity of crops farmers, agro-pastoralist and pastoralists in the region. The objective of this PhD research was to investigate the anticipated impacts of expected future climate change and variability on nutrition and grazing management of livestock in the prevailing extensive agro-pastoral ...

With Chinas rapid economic development during the last decades, the national demand for livestock products has quadrupled within the last 20 years. Most of that increase in demand has been answered by subsidized industrialized production systems, while million of smallholders, which still provide the larger share of livestock products in the country, have been neglected. Fostering those systems would help China to lower its strong urban migration streams, enhance the livelihood of poorer rural population and provide ...

Livestock production contributes substantially to the livelihoods of poor rural farmers in Pakistan; strengthening pastoral communities plays an imperative role in the country’s thrive for poverty alleviation. Intestinal helminths constitute a major threat for pastoral livestock keepers in the whole country because chronic infestation leads to distinct losses in livestock productivity, particularly the growth of young animals. Synthetic anthelmintics have long been considered the only effective way of controlling ...

In the course of the ‘Livestock Revolution’, extension and intensification of, among others, ruminant livestock production systems are current phenomena, with all their positive and negative side effects. Manure, one of the inevitable secondary products of livestock rearing, is a valuable source of plant nutrients and its skillful recycling to the soil-plant interface is essential for soil fertility, nutrient - and especially phosphorus - uses efficiency and the preservation or re-establishment of environmentally ...