Challenges of Community Based Small Ruminant Breeding Program: A Review

This paper is aimed to review the current research status and challenges of existing Community based small ruminant breeding programs in Ethiopia. The current and past research studies have been reviewed and discuss from the available literature such as the small ruminant production system, breeding programs, methods of the small ruminant breeding program, and current community-based sheep and goat breeding program in the country. The achievements of small ruminant genetic improvement program especially the sheep breeding program have been initiated using improving local sheep through crossbreeding (Awassi crossbreeding program using Menz sheep as dam’s line) and improving local sheep through selective breeding (Establishment of an elite nucleus flock for Menz sheep). The disappointment with the crossbreeding and nucleus-based selection programs started the development of a participatory breeding program called a community-based breeding program. CBBP is a village-based breeding activity planned, designed, and implemented by smallholder farmers, either individually or in cooperatives, to effect genetic improvement in their flocks and conserve indigenous genetic resources. However, considering the past genetic improvement approaches and their suitability for Ethiopia's production system. Small ruminant breeding programs have been shifted from central nucleus schemes to community-based breeding programs. However, the implementation of CBBP in Ethiopia has faced different challenges. Some of the challenges are disease and poor animal health services, shortage of feed, poor market access, selling selected breeding rams and uncontrolled mating system, difficulty of pedigree and performance recording, year-round lambing/kidding patterns, unwillingness of farmers to keep all young rams/bucks until the time of selection, incompatible cooperative society proclamation, shortage of incentives for participant farmers are identified as main challenges of the program. Thus, possible solutions and recommendations for such challenges are: organizational capacity of cooperatives and monitoring system of national agricultural research system (NARS) need to be enhanced, availability of complementary services like affordable health service and access to adequate and quality feed resources, establishment of a better market link to ensure returns on investment and strengthening the financial capacity of cooperatives, periodic evaluation of on-going programs for drawbacks identification and adopt program activities as per evaluated information.