Small Ruminant Owners Encouraged to Keep Proper Records

The Rural Agricultural Development Authority (RADA) is urging all small ruminant farmers to keep accurate and current records of their animals.

This is necessary for the Authority to assist farmers to improve farm operations across the island.

In a recent interview with JIS News, Livestock Specialist at RADA, Maxine Brown, said the Authority has created goat record-keeping books for farmers.

“It’s free to them, and we encourage them to use it for their record keeping. When you do find animals that are alive, if you have your record book showing that this animal belongs to you, it is easier for the police to release it to the farmer,” she said.

Record keeping can also track housing and care conditions of animals, including the feed given to an animal, quantity and forage type.

In the event of damage, record-keeping books can also speed up the process of valuing the cost of an animal because of data collected on age, weight, gender and genetics.

“If you’re talking about improving the performance of your animal and you can tell that the animal is a certain age and it was a certain weight when it was born, and it is at a particular weight now, you can track to see if this is the best animal that you should keep,” she said.

Ms. Brown also noted that RADA can use the information to conduct statistical analysis of their animals.

“We’re not asking the farmers to do it. But if we don’t have the information, we cannot help you to identify which animals you should keep or which animals you should probably send to the market,” she said.

Meanwhile, farmers who are mixing breeds should be especially diligent in their record keeping.

“Even with these animals that are coming in, if farmers are bringing animals that have high genetic potential and the farmer is not keeping any data on the animal but he’s mixing it in his herd and selling offspring of those animals, at the end of the day how can you really say if all these animals were beneficial to us? How can we really say that all these genetics that we are bringing in are really boosting the performance of our animals? Without data, there’s nothing to confirm it,” she said.

Farmers wishing to access the goat record-keeping books can contact the RADA office in their parish or call 876-977-1158.