Do your homework before starting tomato production.

Do your homework before starting tomato production.Producing tomatoes is expensive and can make or break a farmer. If you plan to grow this crop, first do your homework and investigate its economic viability. Establishing a packing facility or refurbishing a shed to accommodate the necessary cleaning, grading and packing equipment can be very expensive. Other major costs include the poles and wire or twine needed to support the plants, as well as the price of seed, irrigation infrastructure, fertiliser and crop chemicals. In other words, you have to reach deep into your pocket before there is even a hint of profit.Then there’s the choice of tomato variety that best suits your purposes. There are two main kinds of tomatoes according to growth type: determinate and indeterminate. Indeterminate These varieties continue growing until restricted. Although they generally produce a higher yield, they are more expensive to cultivate than determinate varieties are. The stakes or poles must be higher and will need more string or wire. You need more labour to train up the plants and for pruning. The crop must be irrigated for longer. Harvesting also continues for a longer period, but this might suit some.

Commercial buffalo breeding: ‘It’s not just for the rich’.

Commercial buffalo breeding: ‘It’s not just for the rich’.Over the years, buffalo breeding has evolved into a sound industry that has contributed to the conservation of the species.The Cape buffalo (Syncerus caffer caffer), a subspecies found in Southern and East Africa, is the largest of the African buffalo species. The African forest buffalo (Syncerus caffer nanus), common in the forest areas of Central and West Africa, is the smallest. Syncerus caffer brachyceros occurs in West Africa and Syncerus caffer aequinoctialis is found on the Central African savannas.Breeding ‘disease-free’ buffalo from ‘disease-positive’ parent stock is a relatively recent breakthrough in Southern Africa. Dr John Condy, a veterinarian at the then Rhodesian veterinary department, deserves credit for this pioneering work. In 1985, he built up a herd of ‘disease-free’ buffalo by catching and rearing calves before they were old enough to become carriers of the foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) virus. This far-sighted approach laid the foundation of commercial buffalo breeding in South Africa,

AGRIBUSINESS: How to choose the right bedding for broilers.

AGRIBUSINESS: How to choose the right bedding for broilers. It’s crucial for a broiler producer to get floor management right. This will improve the birds’ physical environment, reduce disease and result in better quality broilers. #poultry Floor management is one of the pillars of successful broiler production, as important as biosecurity, climate control and general animal welfare. Yet this essential aspect is all too often overlooked.

Basic goat health management: all you need to know.

Basic goat health management: all you need to know.For producers to benefit from the growing national and international demand for live goats and goat products, it is essential to have healthy flocks. The profitability of a goat enterprise depends largely on the animals’ health and productivity. It is crucial, therefore, that a goat farmer has the skills to identify an animal in poor health, diagnose the illness and treat it, or obtain assistance from other knowledgeable goat farmers, state animal health officials or private vets. The key is to act swiftly. Prevention is always better than cure, and it is therefore important that any goat introduced to an existing flock be disease-free and healthy. Begin by ensuring that goats always have access to clean drinking water, and enough and the correct quality of grazing, browsing and supplementary feed. Coupled with the requirements above, it is imperative to have a strict vaccination programme to control common diseases, as well as internal and external parasites. Isolate sick goats, so that whatever disease they are suffering from does not spread to healthy animals. Treat every sick goat and keep records of the treatments given. Animals that are often ill should be culled.

Tips for stress-free livestock transporting.

Tips for stress-free livestock transporting. Livestock transportation should result in as little stress to the animals as possible, whether they are being transported to the abattoir or other farms. Stress your livestock while transporting them and you are likely to end up with unnecessary weight loss, or even bruises or other injuries that could lead to disease, carcass rejections or even mortalities. 

Stress during transportation also has a negative impact on meat quality, which will affect your profits in the long term. According to Dr Dirk Verwoerd, a veterinarian at Karan Beef, animals inevitably lose some weight during transportation, as they do not eat or drink during the trip. 

The main goal, however, is to ensure that they do not lose weight due to dehydration. “It’s difficult to give a fixed answer for acceptable weight loss during transportation, as you have to take into account the type of animal as well as its age and condition at the start of the journey,” says Dirk. However, it is generally accepted that six- to eight-month-old beef weaners can lose up to 3% of their body weight during the first 100km and another 1% for each additional 100km. 

 “The initial losses are mainly due to gastro-intestinal content and urine,” explains Dirk. Depending on the condition of the cattle at the start of a trip, and their age, a loss of 8% to 10% of body weight should raise a red flag. A figure such as this indicates that weight loss is caused by intra-cellular dehydration. Because they are ruminants, cattle usually have enough food in their stomachs to last two days without eating, says Dirk.

Water harvesting techniques for smallholder and large-scale farmers.

Water harvesting techniques for smallholder and large-scale farmers. To respond to the water scarcity and inadequate distribution, new techniques need to be explored and old techniques revisited. Small – scale water harvesting techniques provide a direct solution, especially in rural and drought prone areas hence the use of water harvesting techniques.

 In urban areas dam construction, long distance conveyance of water or desalinization may provide options for ensuring water availability. These solutions are generally too costly and complicated for rural water security. Rural population require low cost systems that can be constructed, operated and maintained with the highest level of community involvement and autonomy. Fog harvesting is another techniques. It is captured with the help of polypropylene mesh net or ridges to capture water loaded fog that forms in humid months in mountainous or coastal areas. The mesh normally collects small water droplets which trickle into collection troughs, gutters and drains into a series of tanks. 

Fog harvesting is cheap and the level of technology and maintenance is simple, furthermore the technique is easy to replicate. Contour Trenching. This involves digging trenches along contour lines. Water flowing down the hill is retained by the trench, and it infiltrates the soil below. A good example is in Amboseli dug by Westerveld Conservation Trust. When they dug the trenches they chose deep and closely spaced trenches 4 meters and a meter deep at 25 meter intervals down the slope high enough to capture rain of up to 150mm per day. In between two dug up trenches, crops can be grown and benefit when there’s less rain from the subsoil water reserve gathered after the rainy season.

Yellow fever virus found in semen of Brazilian patient.

Yellow fever virus found in semen of Brazilian patient.Researchers in Brazil recently detected yellow fever virus RNA in urine and semen samples from a convalescent patient in Brazil. Yellow fever is normally detected in blood, but urine has been used to confirm yellow fever infection in humans, researchers from two universities and a research institute in São Paulo noted in their report. But yellow fever was not among the 27 viruses previously identified to persist in semen. The researchers said their findings “suggest that semen can be a useful clinical material for diagnosis of yellow fever and indicate the need for testing urine and semen samples from patients with advanced disease.” “Such testing could improve diagnostics, reduce false-negative results and strengthen the reliability of epidemiologic data during ongoing and future outbreaks,” they wrote in Emerging Infectious Diseases. A recent yellow fever outbreak in Brazil was fueled by cases among monkeys in the Amazon basin and other tropical forests in Brazil, rather than person-to-person transmission involving mosquitoes. Following a large vaccination campaign, Brazil declared an end to the outbreak in September.