Management of draught camels (Camelus dromedarius) in crop-livestock production systems in Northwest Nigeria

I Mohammed and I Hoffmann*

Department of Agricultural Economics and Extension, Usmanu Danfodiyo University, PMB 2346 Sokoto, Nigeria
* Department of Livestock Ecology, Justus-Liebig-University, Ludwigstr.21, 35390 Giessen, Germany
Irene.Hoffmann@fao.org

Abstract

Camels are increasingly being used as draught animals in Northern Nigeria. The study aimed at assessing the feeds and feeding management practices of farmers who own camels and to formulate an optimal feed ration, and to compare the gross margin with that of draught oxen. Interview data were collected in four villages of two Local Government Areas of Sokoto State, Nigeria.

The average gross margin of farmers who owned camels exceeded that of farmers owning oxen by 21 %. This can be attributed to the limited utilisation of oxen for other purposes apart from ridging and weeding. Feeding costs were lower for one camel than for one pair of oxen.

Keywords: Camel, draught power, crop-livestock integration, Northern Nigeria

Introduction

Dromedaries in Nigeria are concentrated in the semiarid northern part of the country. The introduction of the camel into northern Nigeria can be linked to the caravan trade links between the Sahara and Sokoto, Katsina or Kano, Fachi and Bilma (Ritter 1988; Bernus 1990). FDCPLS (1992) estimated the population of camels in northern Nigeria as 74,360. About 60 % of this stock is found in the former Sokoto State (Table 1).

The most widely used source of animal power in Nigeria is the oxen harnessed in pairs, which can be used for 5 to 6 working hours per day. The casual use of the camel as draught animal was reported by Musa (1990). The camel is, however, increasingly becoming important in primary land preparation and secondary field operations during the rainy season. Farmers in the northern states are exploiters of camels rather than producers, since the camels are mainly bred by nomads.

Besides the initial investment in the procurement of the draught animals, meeting the feed requirements of work animals is the most important management problem in north-west Nigeria. Practices include free grazing and the utilisation of crop residues in the dry season. Camel and oxen differ with regard to feeding habits. The camel is a browser (Farid et al 1984). Abbas et al (1995) found that dromedaries spent 81 % of their feeding time on herbs and Acacia bushes, and only 19 % on grasses, with Bracharia and Aristida species being the most preferred species. Wilson (1989) observed that dromedaries take as much as 90 % of their diet from browse plants. An important feature of their browsing habits is that they are not in direct competition with other domestic stock either in terms of the type of feed eaten or in the height at which they eat above the ground (Wilson 1989; Schwartz 1989; Table 2). Examining the adaptation strategies of the camels on a thornbush pasture in northern Kenya, Rutagwenda et al (1989) observed that unlike cattle, camels are able to seek out herbs, fruits and succulent leaves of a great variety of plants. Cattle and sheep were found to prefer grasses, herbs and small shrub vegetation at ground level (approximately 70 % of their grazing time). Such vegetation type undergoes more severe seasonal fluctuations in both, quantity and quality, than the large deep rooted trees and shrubs preferred by camels. In 90 % of their total feeding time during the dry season, camels consumed 22-27 plant species, compared to only 8 taken by cattle. Camels were also observed to consume a lower proportion of poor quality plants in their diets.

Camels feed diurnally or nocturnally and are unrivalled in their ability to utilise desert and semi-desert vegetation (with certain attributes; thorny, odorous and secretive) which are unpalatable and unacceptable or inaccessible to many other animals (Schwartz et al 1983; Ghaji and Adegwa 1986; Yagil 1994). The camel can also be fed with green fodder or concentrates and can utilise a wide range of agricultural by-products.

The aim of the study was to assess the feeds and feeding management practices of farmers who own draught camels and to formulate an optimal feed ration, and to compare the gross margin with that of draught oxen.

Material and methods

An explorative study on work camel and oxen was conducted in 3 villages of Tambuwal Local Government Area and in Bislam village, Dange-Shuni Local Government Area of Sokoto State (n=40). In Bislam, 25 camel owning farmers were visited repeatedly in 1995/96. The farmers were visited at their farms to observe and discuss how they use camel for farm and other household tasks. They were interviewed, using structured questionnaires, on their farming activities, use of farm inputs such as land, labour, types of crops grown and the role of the camel in their farming activities. Data on investment requirements and management practices, and the different uses of camels and income generated by work camels were collected from the farmers.

Since feed costs represent the majority of variable costs, an optimal feed combination for work camels as compared to oxen was determined using the Linear Programming (LP) programme of the SAS software (Version 6.12). The model is represented as follows:

Minimise: Z = a_ij* X_ij

Subject to: a_ijX_ij > b_i and X_ij > 0 .

where:

Z = objective function for least cost ration for a work camel;
a_ij price per unit of feed material X_ij;
b_i is the vector matrix of nutrient requirements for the work camel.

The following assumptions were made in the LP model

• Animals cannot browse/graze for more than 8 hrs per day (due to danger of theft, crop damage),

• the 8 hr day has to be divided into grazing and working time,

• there is an unlimited quantity of crop residue and/or green fodder available on local markets,

• no monetary costs are associated with grazing/browsing on communal rangeland,

• the nutrient requirement of livestock is proportional to its weight,

• the DM intake does not exceed 3% of the liveweight.

A daily maintenance requirement of 50 MJ MEm for a 450 kg work animal was assumed in the model (Table 3).

Feed ration formulation was done as compared to a pair of work oxen, taking into account grazing and working time. Three levels of work intensity (1.2, 1.5 and 1.8 times maintenance) and three levels of work duration (2, 4, 6 hrs per day) were tested in two seasons (rainy / dry) with different feed availability (Table 4).

Nutrient values of the feedstuffs used in the computation were obtained from Rivière (1978) and Schaefer (1998). Prices of feedstuffs were obtained from the farmers in the study area.

The profitability of integrating the camel into sedentary farming systems was examined using gross margin analysis. Since the farm production enterprise is mainly for subsistence, most of the production inputs were home produced. The value of land was not included in the analysis because there was no market value equivalence for land in the area. Land ownership was mainly through inheritance. Market price equivalence, considered as the opportunity price, of inputs and outputs was used to arrive at the production costs of and revenue from farming activities.

For the gross margin analysis, working days for camel and oxen as given by the farmers in the interviews were included in the model (Table 5). An energy expenditure of 1.5 MEm at a 4 hr work rate was assumed. The economic life of a draught animal was assumed to be 7 years. The gross margin of the crop production enterprise was assumed to be the same for both, camel and oxen, as well as the labour quality in ploughing and weeding, and the number of days the animals worked during the rainy season (Table 5).

Results and discussion

Farmers cultivated about 2.7 hectares split, on average into 4.8 plots. This shows the extent of the fragmentation of land holding even among farmers with draught animals. The cropping pattern is dominated by cereals, intercropped with legumes (Table 6).

Besides keeping draught animals, sedentary farmers also keep other species of ruminant livestock which are used as capital, security or for meeting social/religious obligations (Table 7).

The majority of the farmers (56%) kept the sand-brown ecotype of camel, which was also the most common ecotype found in the Sokoto livestock market where it attracted the highest prices (Mohammed 2000). When asked to rank the benefits they derive from keeping work camels, 92 % of the farmers stated that owning a work camel leads to increased area of cultivated land while only 48 % stated that owing a work camel increases their crop yield. Labour saving has also been shown to be an advantage (76 %; Table 8). These views have been widely reported as positive impact of the adoption of animal traction technology (Munzinger 1981; Panin and de Haen 1989).

Farmers keep the camel largely as a draught animal for land preparation during the rainy season and for transportation of farm produce during the harvest period or for transportation of other goods to and from village markets. Discussions with farmers revealed that oxen are being substituted by camel for tractive work. Even sedentary Fulani cattle herders are becoming more interested in keeping one or two camels side by side with cattle.

When old or incapacitated for field work, camels are subsequently sold to butchers for meat. Butchers no longer have a feeling of professional or economic inferiority when handling camel meat. Trade in live camels is a stable and all year round business for marketing agents (Mohammed 2000).

Farmers realised an average revenue of 39,200 Naira and a gross margin of 25,873 per hectare from the crop production activity. The values per household were 97,523 and 68,831 Naira. It is worth noting that 53 % of farmers' revenue was accounted for by the market value equivalence of crop residues. This is not unexpected in a system where the farmers rely on crop residues as a source of livestock feed in the dry season. An additional source of revenue to farmers was supervised hiring of the work animals. Farmers hire out the service of their work animals (oxen and camel) to neighbours for land preparation. Of particular importance to farmers who own work camels is the farm produce evacuation service rendered to other farmers during the harvest period (Table 9). Owners of work camels from villages around Sokoto travelled during the early dry season (February to March) as far southwards as villages south of Kontagora (about 500 km) in search of farm produce evacuation work for farmers in remote and inaccessible villages. Interviews with farmers who were engaged in such migratory labour showed that they earned one bundle of millet/sorghum for every ten bundles transported. Through such service, camel owners were able to earn an equivalent of 9,900 Naira in grain within a period of three month Such additional income was used to supplement family food, or can be sold to meet other non-food household needs. The owners of work camels also used the animals for transporting farm produce and other goods to and from village markets for a fee, which depends on the weight of the items and the distance of the market. Farmers interviewed indicate that they could earn as much as 2,236 Naira from such activities (Table 9). Up to 19.5 % of the total farm revenue of work camel owners was realised from the supervised hiring service.

Oxen are only hired out for ploughing or weeding, but not for transportation. Hence, the total number of working days for each animal species is different (Table 5).

Feeding management of draught animals

The feeding regime of work animals in the area can be categorised into dry season and rainy season feeding, which differ with regard to the availability and source of feed (Table 10).

Farmers usually collected about 3 bundles of forage daily. This collection, according to the farmers, takes two adult family members about one hour. The average distance from the homestead to the forage collection area is longer in the dry than in the rainy season, and collection time also increases during the dry season (Table 11). On non-working days, the camels were allowed to graze on natural pastures for up to seven hours per day.

Means of transportation for feed collection was the camel alone in 27 % of cases, and the camel and other means in 45 %.

Dry season feeds and feeding

The dry season is the most critical period for meeting the feed requirement of livestock in general, and work animals in particular. The major sources of feed are crop residues from the previous cropping season and leaves/twigs of trees and shrubs. Table 12 gives an estimated quantity and cost of feeds and feeding for one camel of a sedentary farmer in the study area.

Due to the limited supply of feeds in the dry season, farmers ration the crop residues they feed to their work animals. The first three types of crop residue in Table 12 were usually fed to the animals during the middle of the dry season. The farmers feed only one of the materials per day or for a couple of days, depending upon availability. Unlike with other species, cut-and-carry is only occasionally practised for camels. Grains are only given on work days. The frequency and the quantity of grain given to work camels is less in the dry season because the animals work less and grains are particularly expensive.

Rainy season feeds and feeding

During the rainy season, after the day's work or on work-free days, draught oxen and camels are allowed to graze natural forage in the surroundings. This is usually supplemented by cut-and-carry weeds which are usually fed to the animals in the late evening.

Although dromedaries are known to meet their dietary need mainly on trees and shrubs, interviews with farmers revealed that some grasses, found only in the rainy season, were also utilised by camels. Pennisetum sp. was the most commonly reported grass species consumed. The second and third grasses were Digitaria horizontalis and Sesbania sesban. The three most common leguminous annual weeds consumed by camel, as reported by farmers, were Vigna luteola, Monechma ciliatum and Commelina diffusa. Mimosa sp. and Cassia sp. were the two most commonly reported shrubs consumed in the area. Combretum and Piliostigma were found to be equally important as browse for camel. The most commonly reported trees browsed in the area were Parkia sp., Balanites sp., Lannea sp. and Diospyros sp..

Least-cost ration formulation for draught animals

The least-cost source of feed for the work camel in the dry season is cowpea hay, followed by browse. The model suggests that it is not profitable to use sorghum grains, groundnut hay or sorghum straw for feeding draught camels because of the relatively high cost.

At any given level of energy expenditure but with increasing work duration, the amount of dry matter from grazed/browsed pasture declines. It is replaced by increasing amounts of cowpea hay with its higher nutritive value. Although browsing/grazing in the communal pasture is free, more of the nutrient requirement of the animals in the rainy season is supplied by cut-and-carry fodder. While sorghum grains do not currently form part of the ration for camels in the rainy season (Table 13), results of the model suggest that sorghum is the second source for meeting the nutrient requirements of oxen (Table 14).

 

With regard to seasonal differences, the DMI of dromedaries in the rainy season (13.4 kg d^-1) is significantly higher than that in the dry season (8.6 kg d^-1). The reverse trend applies in the case of DMI for oxen (Table 15).

Gross margin analysis for draught animals

The average gross margin of farmers who own camels exceeds that of farmers owning oxen by 21 % (Table 16).

This can be attributed to the limited utilisation of oxen for other purposes besides ridging and weeding. Oxen-owning farmers in Bislam and surrounding villages did not use them for transportation of farm produce. Doing so would imply additional expenditure on the purchase of an ox cart, hence becoming more dependent on external inputs. Moreover, the cart-oxen-combination cannot be used for long-distance labour services because of the lack or poor condition of the road network in the rural areas. Limited opportunities for the utilisation of draught oxen have been reported as one of the factors responsible for the low level of adoption of animal traction technology in West Africa (Jaeger and Matlon 1990). It seems that the profitability of animal traction technology is highly dependent on the extended utilisation of the animal for transportation, as was practised by 56 % of camel owning farmers (Table 9).

Conclusions

• Considering the lower cost of meeting the nutrient requirement of a work camel, and taking into account that the dromedaries have a wider scope for utilisation for other income-generating activities in the dry season, it is more profitable for a farmer to own a work camel than a pair of oxen.

• Particular research should focus on the formulation of feed rations based on the optimal use locally available crop residues.

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