Environmental descriptors influencing performance of the Nguni ecotypes

Nguni is an indigenous breed of cattle in Southern Africa, specifically found in Swaziland, South Africa, Zimbabwe and Namibia. Due to the ten years of civil war, cattle numbers in Mozambique was reduced from 1.6 million head in 1976 to approximately 200,000 in 1992. After 1996, large numbers of Nguni cattle were imported from South Africa into Mozambique as part of the livestock restocking program. A nucleus herd of Nguni cattle was established at the breeding station, Posto de Fomento do Impaputo (PFI), near Maputo and next to the Swaziland border. PFI has also a separate breeding nucleus of the Landim cattle. Both these ecotypes are registered at the Nguni Breed's Society of South Africa. This study whose results are reported here aims to determine the environmental descriptors that influence the performance of the Nguni and the Landim cattle ecotypes in Mozambique. Results from the analysed data will help to provide information for sustainable country level utilization and conservation programs in the region. Reproductive and productive data, between 1997 and 2008, were analysed for the two ecotypes using PROC GLM from SAS (1999). Variation sources such as type of breed, place of origin of foundation herd, parity, season and year of calving were taken into consideration in preliminary runs. Results of the preliminary runs on PFI herds indicate that the age at first calving (AFC) was 1089.2 ± 193 d and the calving interval (CI) was 437.6 ± 98.8 d on average for both ecotypes. For AFC there were interactions between the year and season of calving (Nguni or Landim; P < 0.05) and place of birth (Chobela, RSA or Impaputo; P < 0.01) for both ecotypes. CI decreased as the number of parities increased. A significant difference (P < 0.0001) was found on CI for the place of herd's birth, parity and interaction between the year and season of calving (dry and rainy seasons). It is concluded that there is sufficient data to demonstrate within and between population variations in the different ecotypes in terms of reproductive performance. A more complete analysis, which includes information from both ecotypes and data from South Africa as well as other similar environments, should be done. These results can thus be used for the design and implementation of breeding and sustainable conservation programs for the Nguni and the Landim ecotypes under Mozambique and South Africa as well as similar environments. (author)