Background

Goats purchased for export are mainly from Afar, Somali and Borena areas of Ethiopia. Purchases from some highland parts of the country have been discontinued due to an observed darkening of the meat during storage. Exporters at abattoirs suspect that this phenomenon may be due to poor fat coverage of the carcass, which in turn may reflect inadequate provision of dietary nutrients. Indigenous goats are not currently attaining the required marketing weight per age and acceptable fat content. The major factors that affect their productivity are feed supply, animal genotype and management. Feed resources vary in the different parts of Ethiopia but generally involve grazing of native pasture, crop residues of cereals and grain legumes. Oil cakes, mill products and other unconventional feeds are also sometimes provided as supplements. However, grazing land is increasingly being brought under cultivation and so further exploitation of goat production may be necessary under stall-fed conditions.

Indigenous goats appear to have the potential to meet the export market provided they can be fed optimum nutritional inputs, and appropriate genotypes are selected that meet the necessary chevon quantity and quality required for the export market. Therefore, there is research needed to compare the performance of different genotypes using improved feeding systems made of available feed ingredients in Ethiopia in order to identify those best able to achieve the live weight, carcass yield and meat quality required at a younger age for the export market. An experiment was planned to achieve this aim at the International Livestock Research Institute's Debre Zeit Research Station in Ethiopia.

This case study focuses on the study protocol written for the experiment and also discusses certain elements of the study design. The results have since been published and can be found in Sebsibe (2006).