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Sustainable Agriculture Extension Manual
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Zero-grazing
Zero-grazing means keeping animals in a stall, and bringing fodder to them instead of allowing them to graze outside. It is also sometimes called "cut-and-carry". The description below is about how to keep dairy cattle using zero-grazing. It is an intensive system that produces a lot of milk from a small amount of land.
Zero-grazing can also be used with goats and sheep. They can be kept in a shed with a slatted wood or bamboo floor, raised about 1 m above the ground. The droppings fall through the slats into a pit beneath the shed. They can then be carried away to be used as fertilizer.
Location
Zero-grazing is especially useful in areas where land is scarce. It requires a reliable source of feed, and sufficient labour to cut and carry the feed.
Advantages
- Zero-grazing reduces the number of pests (especially ticks and intestinal worms), since the animals do not graze on infested pastures.
- It allows the intensive use of land for growing fodder, and maximizes the use of the available land.
- It reduces damage to crops caused by grazing cattle.
Disadvantages
- This method requires labour to cut and carry the feed and to fetch water.
- Building and maintaining the shed and pit take money and labour.
Requirements
- Building materials for the cattle shed (wood, cement, sand, gravel, posts, roofing).
- Field to grow fodder.
Shed construction
1. Choose where to build the cattle shed. This should be close to a reliable source of clean water, as cattle can drink up to 100 litres of water a day. If possible, build the shed near a field where you can grow fodder.
2. Build the shed (see the diagrams for a suggested design). The roof can cover the whole pen, or just the animal cubicles. It should slope away from the pen so rainwater does not fall into the pen. The roof can be made of metal or thatch; thatch is cooler but must be repaired regularly and can catch fire. The roof should slope from a height of about 2.7 m (9 feet) at one side, down to about 2 m (7 feet, high enough for a person to stand up in).
3. The walking area should have a floor made of concrete or hard-packed soil. Concrete is better, as this is where the animals will spend most of their time, and concrete is easy to clean. The floor should slope gently (2 cm drop in every 1 m distance, or 2.5 inches in 10 feet) towards a channel leading to a manure pit outside the pen. The concrete can be made from a mix of 1 part of cement, 2 parts of gravel and 3 parts of sand. The floor should not be made too smooth, otherwise the cattle may slip on it.
4. Dig a manure pit, large enough to hold the manure produced in 2-3 days. Dig a channel leading from the walking area to the pit, and line the channel and pit with concrete. If you cannot afford concrete, make a paste of red soil, cow dung and ash. Smear this paste on the sides and bottom of the pit. Allow it to dry, then smear on another layer. Repeat this five times to build up a leak-proof layer.
5. Cover the pit with a plastic sheet or banana leaves to reduce the amount of sunlight hitting the manure. Sunlight causes the nitrogen in the manure to escape into the air, so reduces the value of the manure as fertilizer.
6. Make individual cubicles 120 cm wide x 210 cm long (4 feet x 7 feet), one for each cow. The cubicle floors should be made of dry soil, as cattle prefer to lie on soil rather than on cold concrete. The cubicle floors should be higher than the concrete floor of the walking area and should slope slightly toward the concrete. The cubicles should be just large enough so the urine and dung should drop onto the concrete area; this keeps the cubicles clean.
7. For calves, you can put in temporary barriers of wood to make the pens smaller: about 120 cm wide x 150 cm long (4 feet x 5 feet). The floor of the calf pens should be raised about 4 cm (1.5 inches) and should be made of slatted wood. This helps keep the floor clean, and protects the calf from diseases.
8. Set aside parts of the stall for a milking area and as a store for feed.
9. Provide troughs for water and feed in the walking area and the calf pen. Provide a feed trough in the milking area so the cows can feed during milking.
Diagram of a shed for two cows. The roof should cover the whole shed; part has been cut away to show the inside of the shed.
Fodder
1. Plant fodder crops near to the shed so you do not have to carry the feed too far. About 0.4 ha (1 acre) of Napier grass is enough for each graded dairy cow. If the Napier grass is intercropped with desmodium or other legumes, 0.3 ha (0.75 acre) is enough for one cow; 0.4 ha of Napier and desmodium is enough to feed a cow and a calf. See the section on Growing Napier grass for fodder for more information.
2. Plant the fodder grass in rows, and dig a shallow trench in between each row. You can put the manure slurry into these trenches to fertilize the grass.
Feeding and management
1. Every day, cut fresh grass and feed to the cattle. Make sure the feed troughs are never empty.
2. Provide as much water as the animals want to drink.
3. Hang solid mineral blocks (you can get these from feed stores) for the animals to lick. Or you can put powder minerals in a wooden box with an open top, and fix the box in the pen for the animals to lick.
4. Clean the walking area every morning. Pour water on the concrete and sweep all the manure towards the manure pit. Every 2-3 days, remove the manure slurry from the pit and use it to fertilize the fodder grass. You can also use the manure to fertilize other crops (see the section on Urine-manure slurry as fertilizer).
Do's
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Don'ts
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