FG Partners RPC Cattle Hub to Conduct Training on Artificial Insemination

The Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (FMARD) through the department of animal husbandry services in conjunction with Real People Concept Cattle Hub (RPC) has organized two-week intensive training for artificial inseminators to improve livestock production with a special focus on cattle.

The Head, Animal Breeding and Conservation, Department of Animal Husbandry Services, FMARD, Mr Abdulraheem Yahaya Onipe, while addressing newsmen at Real People Concept Cattle Hub in Iwo, Osun State noted that AI will help in proper farm planning

Keeping male animals is more strenuous than keeping female animals because males tend to consume more feed, grow larger, more aggressive and potentially ill-mannered, making natural mating result in accidents and injury to either the cow or the bull.

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Natural mating is physically stressful with males depositing more semen than is theoretically needed to produce a pregnancy, while collected semen can be transported and diluted to create hundreds of doses from a single ejaculation, allowing multiple females in different geographical locations to be inseminated.

He explained that artificial insemination will help in upgrading local dairy cattle that have no genetic potential to produce more than one to two litres of milk per day and that it will also help regulate breeding where about 100 animals can be bred, calve and feed at the same time.

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According to Onipe, in order to ensure that the knowledge gained by the inseminators doesn’t end at the training venue, the ministry has procured motorcycles for each of them and deposited 135 litres of nitrogen tanks for the storage of semen in their states with complete mobile artificial insemination kit.

Managing Director, Real People Concept, Mr Tunmise Olagbaju, narrated that the ministry has engaged his organization for two weeks to train inseminators selected from six states across the country which include Kano, Taraba, Niger, Oyo, Bauchi and Katsina states.