*3.2.2 Silages*

*Livestock Health and Farming*

*3.1.4 Fodder crops*

SEL during the dry season limits their availability in the rest of the season [29]. Fresh leaves of species such as *C. mopane*, for instance, are high in tannins and lignin [30, 31]. Additionally, indigenous browse species normally attract multiple uses at the livestock-wildlife interface with the more visible, more dominant, and more frequent browse species having more uses than less apparent plants [32]. They are used as sources of firewood, timber, fruits, edible roots, bark and leaves, and human and ethnoveterinary medicines [33–36]. Competitive use increases vulnerability to

Fodder refers to any plants grown specifically as animal feed. They include a variety of pasture grasses like *Panicum maximum*, *Cenchrus ciliaris*, and *Chloris gayana*; pasture legumes such as *Vigna unguiculata*, *Dolichos lablab*, and *Macroptilium atropurpureum*; and fodder trees such as *Leucaena leucocephala*, *Acacia angustissima*, and *Calliandra calothyrsus*. However, most of them do not thrive in semi-arid areas such as the SEL due to high temperatures and low precipitation. Low adoption of fodder crop production is also attributed to lack of extension for farmer training, shortage of labour due to overlapping of the farming calendar with the main crop, high cost and unavailability of seed, and land scarcity. It is therefore important for farmers to

maximise production of those species adaptable to their climatic conditions.

*3.1.5 Conventional supplements, food industry, and agro-industrial by-products*

*Browse trees provide feed during the dry season when both the grazing resource and cereal stovers become* 

There are different food industry by-products and agricultural wastes that are alternative dry season livestock feed supplements. These can be of animal and plant origin or of the fermentation industry. Animal by-products include blood, bones, meat and bone offals, fat, intestine and rumen contents, whey, tannery by-products, and poultry manure [1]. By-products of plant origin consist those of the milling industry (e.g. bran, waste flour), oil industry (e.g. soya bean and sunflower cakes), sugar industry (molasses), and citrus and horticulture waste. The fermentation industry produces grain, molasses, and brewer's waste, among a large array of other by-products. By-products of plant origin are the commonly used. For instance, in the SEL, molasses is readily available as the main sugarcane processing factories in Zimbabwe are located in that area. However, high cost of transportation

overutilisation, unsustainable harvesting, and mismanagement.

**108**

**Figure 3.**

*limiting.*

Silage is forage produced from the fermentation process of chopped fresh green material under anaerobic conditions. These materials include fodder or forage grasses. Ensiling maize has been shown to improve feed digestibility and reduce methane gas production by 30% compared to feeding dry maize [37]. However, despite silages being advantageous in areas of water shortages, as well as reducing tannins due to the heat produced during the incubation period, silage production is not common among farmers.
