Picture: Minister for Agriculture, Waterways and Environment Hon. Dr Mahendra Reddy (second from left) holding the new improved breeding bucks.

Improving the genetic makeup of livestock in the country remains a priority for the Ministry of Agriculture to help ease the import bill of meat products.

As part of the long-standing efforts of the Ministry in this regard, another set of improved genetic stock (breeding bucks) was released by the Ministry's Sigatoka Research Station at its Yasiyasi Goat Farm along Nasau Road, Nacocolevu last week.

While officiating at the event, Minister for Agriculture, Waterways and Environment Hon. Dr Mahendra Reddy reiterated the stance taken by the Ministry in introducing improved genetic materials to bolster the stock available amongst local livestock farms, in this instance, goat farms.

A common occurrence and issue brought up by livestock farmers around the country was the decreasing size of animals that were reared by farmers, with Minister Reddy highlighting that this issue of decreasing animal size would be addressed by introducing improved genetics.

“The issue of decreasing livestock sizes and their shrinking size is primarily because there is a lot of inbreeding occurring, we are not providing new genetic material and farmers are not able to, for different reasons, bring in new genetic material, new breeders and therefore there is a lot of in-breeding and due to this continued in-breeding among our livestock, this is what is to be expected.”

"The carcass size of animals are shrinking and we've noted this and it is for this reason that we will continue to work to improve the genetics at our local goat farms and sheep farms as well," he said.

"From last year, we’ve been giving out breeder sheep and breeder goats, our F1 so we can deal with this issue. I want to congratulate these farmers who have been selected, there are hundreds of farmers who are asking us to provide breeders but we can only do this progressively and I've told the staff clearly that those farmers who have received breeders already won't receive any more breeders but instead we can help them to exchange breeders with each other, at our cost, the Ministry will bear the transportation cost of exchanging breeder bucks so that we can keep the genetic material intact.

In retrospect, Hon. Reddy highlighted that annually, Fiji continued to spend approximately $48million on the importation of lamb meat and to address this trade deficit, enhancing the goat development programmes under the Ministry of Agriculture, as goat meat was a close substitute to lamb meat, this would entail we had more control over the country's protein meat requirements as opposed to continued reliance on imported meat products.

Twelve cross goat breeds were released yesterday to identified goat livestock farmers from the Western Division at a discounted price to help them develop their respective goat farms. These farmers paid 20% less than the base market rate of $10.00, allowing farmers to pay only $8.00(VEP) per kg for live weight based on the notion that had farmers received these improved breeder bucks at no cost to them, there would be no sense of ownership by the farmers which would lead to an abuse of public-funded assistance.

Meanwhile, goat farmer Ms Roshni Lata of Raviravi in Ba said she looked forward to seeing the results the new breeder buck would bear on her farm.

"I am thankful to have been chosen to receive the improved breeders because I have more than 100 goats, and the breeder I bought last year was not performing so I thought it may be because my current breeder cannot keep up with the does so I am thankful that I receive this boer to help increase my stock holding," said Ms Lata.

As for Mr Daniel Avinesh Nandan of Tavarau, Ba who has a total stock of close to 100 goats and sheep, the released boer goats would benefit his livestock holding in the long run.

"It is a good opportunity to get the breeder and for me to expand my goat farms, I want the breeder because my farm is very big and I want to grow my goat farm because, in the long run, I know that I will benefit from the good genetics of the goat because I sell at the market price of $10/kg and it is going good, this will surely make a difference in my production levels," said Mr Nandan.

Additionally, the release of these genetically improved bucks will assist in improving the bloodline of existing ones on the farm thus improving the production and productivity of farms.

The F1 Breed, which is a cross between Boer and Anglo Nubian breeds was released to the farmers, and after one year of mating, other identified farms will receive these breeds as an exchange programme will be implemented to counter the issue of inbreeding by transporting the pure breeders to another farm to improve the genetic material at those other farms, otherwise, the exercise of releasing these improved genetic stock via these breeder bucks would be futile.

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