Animal Husbandry

Different dairy farming systems exist in Malawi. Traditionally, and particularly in the Northern Region, where milk constitutes an integral part of the daily human diet, cattle rearing also involves milk production using indigenous zebu breeds.

The colonial settlers who started importing and rearing dairy cattle well before the country’s independence in 1964, initially, identified the need for the development of smallholder dairy farming around the country’s major cities to satisfy the increasing needs for dairy products because of the population increase and urbanization. These farms are predominantly located close to Blantyre in the Southern Region, Lilongwe in the Central Region, and Mzuzu in the Northern Region. Because of the increasing demand for milk in the country’s major cities and the heightened awareness of the importance of dairy production, the smallholder dairy industry became a focus for improvement by the Malawian Government in 1969. This culminated in the initia­tion of a government-supported crossbreeding program in 1973, involving zebu and Holstein-Friesians (Munthali et al. 1992). Currently, several international agencies, corporations, and NGOs are partnering with the Government of Malawi and other stakeholders such as the Malawi Milk Marketing Project, the Malawi Dairy Business Development Program, and the Small Scale Livestock and Livelihood Promotion (SSLLP) to create programs to further expand the dairy industry.

There are over 8000 smallholder farmers in Malawi, organized into about 50 Milk Bulking Groups (MBGs). These MBGs are managed by farmers and are tasked with collecting milk from members within an 8-10 km radius and for testing milk (for specific gravity and acidity) before it is pooled in a cooling tank from where it is collected by the commercial milk processors (Banda et al. 2011). Majority of the smallholder farmers (78%) own one to two animals and only 7% own more than five animals. The average animal holding per farmer is only 2.2 heads of cattle (Banda etal. 2011).

Commercial dairy farms are few and far between. Pure Holstein-Friesians and Jerseys and their crosses represent, respectively, 0.6 and 2.7% of dairy cattle

Table 16.1 Summary of BTB surveys conducted in Malawi

^aTissue samples ^bZiehl-Neelsen staining ^cAnnual Reports of Department of Animal Health and Livestock Development 2005-2015

Chagunda et al. (1998), but they produce, respectively, 10 and 27% of the annual milk produced (Kaneene et al. 2016).

The abundance of animal diseases is one of the major impediments for livestock production in Malawi. A number of these diseases have a multi-dimensional impact, because they affect both humans and animals. In the following sections, bovine tuberculosis (BTB) in Malawi is discussed.

16.3