Abstract:
This study is a combination of a retrospective survey and farm monitoring. The survey touched
40 bovine farms belonging to 04 regions in Constantine. Those farms have 794 bovines, among
them 422 dairy cows. The questions of quality and quantity nature concerned the structural and
fu
nctional characteristics of the surveyed farms. Farm monitoring was conducted in 02 farms
taken as a sub sample from the surveyed farms, and concerned reproduction and milk production
performances of 60 dairy cows.
Bovine breeding farms in Constantine face besides arid climate and lack of water resources, the
problem of tight agricultural lands, with 80% of farms having superficies below 20 hectares.
Breeding farms are often a family business with a poor instructive level of the owners (44.73%
of illiterates) who search to diversify their income by breeding calves (95.5% of them) or sheep
(75% of them).
High productive cow breeds are predominant (66.66%), local and mixed breeds, despite their
low production, represent respectively 31.99% and 7.34% of livestock.
The importance of livestock in each farm is a result of an adjustment between the number of
animals and feed availability; consequently 70% of the farms have less than 10 diary cows.
Fodder cultures are poorly developed, with 57.13% of breeders reserving less than the half of
their land for their culture; and 57.14% of breeders growing only one fodder species.
Feeding management is characterized by lack of autonomy, inexistence of ration calculation,
with excessive usage of dry fodder (hay and straw) and consecutively concentrated feed, to the
detriment of green fodder and silage used only by 22.5% of the farms.
Reproductive management, usually badly conducted, is characterized by poor use of artificial
insemination (only 5%) and lack of animal monitoring; the consequences are poor performances
which are below technical and economical goals.
Milk production is conducted in the absence of necessary specialized equipments, milk yields are
low and often not recorded, milking practices are bad and dry period management too.
Commercialization practices don’t reflect the real production; this latter is largely used for
fa
mily consummation, or sold to neighboring consumers rather than delivered to milk factories
(only 22.5% of the producers).
Existing pathologies are of multifactorial nature and confirm the numerous deficiencies noticed
in the structure (bad housing conditions) and functioning (bad management) of the farms.
