Zimbabwe Herd Book No9

ZIMBABWE HERD BOOK-YEAR OF THE NKONE 2023

NEWSLETTER FROM HHN and MH NKONE STUDS

No 9 (20th November 2022)

By SEKURU

NOTE: Thank you to the readers of these newsletters and those who have discussed or debated some of the issues. This is healthy and what I originally intended. I am by no means an expert but just an ordinary farmer who loves his cattle and I have my own ideas and way of doing things, which will not necessarily be the same as those of others and are not necessarily any better.

Please forgive me if my topics are a bit repetitive at times, some are very important in my mind.

Every one of us has something to learn from others. If these newsletters achieve that, I am happy.

DUNG BEETLES, OXPECKERS AND BEES.

I was again, one evening recently, fascinated by watching Dung Beetles working on fresh cow dung, breaking it up and making their balls and rolling them away to bury and lay their eggs inside. Their comparative strength and determination are incredible. African Dung Beetles navigate and orientate themselves by the Milky Way at night. Many of us grew up reading that lovely book “Jock of the Bushveld” by Percy Fitzpatrick and the first edition is distinguished by having three of E. Caldwell’s delightful drawings mistakenly depicting a Dung Beetle pushing a dungball with the front legs rather than the back legs!

Now that another rainy season has started the tick and worm burdens in our cattle increase and we have to control these parasites; we have to use some pretty lethal chemicals to varying degrees, depending on our system, to achieve control. Most of us these days are aware of the importance of Dung Beetles, Bees and Oxpeckers to the well-being and health of our environment generally and our farming enterprises in particular. Many of our acaricides were (and some still are), toxic to these important organisms. Some of our anthelmintics that we use for internal parasites are still toxic to Dung Beetles. Obviously, we all strive to minimise the amount of chemicals we use and the frequency of application because of the cost factor. But also, to REDUCE the build-up of resistance to chemicals in both external and internal parasites and to INCREASE the resistance in our cattle to the parasites and the effects of their infestation. Thirdly to BUILD UP numbers of importantly useful animals such as Oxpeckers, Dung Beetles and Bees. This is difficult to always achieve in some areas due to many factors. We should all do our utmost to use only non-toxic, environment-friendly chemicals for our livestock. Check the label and ask your supplier if the product is non-toxic. Always dispose of your chemical containers very carefully, preferably by burning and burying. Most of the acaracides and some of the anthelmintics we use are highly toxic to fish, do not dispose of them in open water, waterways or drainage ditches.

Australia, with its large number of non-indigenous livestock which were imported there, had no indigenous Dung Beetles to break down and disperse more than 80 million tonnes of dung per year produced by millions of introduced livestock. Their native Dung Beetles were adapted to marsupials’ dung and not cattle. They had to import Dung Beetles, some from Africa, to solve what would have become a major problem, leaving vast tracts of grazing land dead and useless. Look carefully at your grazing and it will be very apparent that cattle will not graze a tuft of grass on which a pat of dung has landed and will only do so sometime later. Not only can grazing become unpalatable from a build-up of dung, but grass can also be smothered and die off if there is enough dung build up. The Dung Beetle of course, disperses and buries the dung pat, cleaning up and aerating the soil and taking nutrients deep down into the pasture roots. They also help to control flies and worms which breed in the dung.

I can remember when we used Arsenical and later, Toxaphene dips on our cattle and all oxpeckers were completely wiped out in cattle areas. I remember seeing my first and then, only oxpeckers, on cattle in a Tsetse Fly test herd at the Savé/Runde junction many years ago. It later became commonplace to see oxpeckers on cattle in many of the ranches when oxpecker-friendly dips became available. We have two species of oxpecker in Zimbabwe, the red-billed and yellow-billed.

It is well documented that the decline in bees seriously affects pollination and consequent production in many agricultural crops. I can very well remember huge die-offs of bees after large-scale aerial spraying of cotton crops later on in my life. I can also remember as a child, seeing heaps of dead Dung Beetles around pats of fresh cow dung after cattle had been dewormed with a toxic anthelmintic.

There are many other useful insects and organisms which are beneficial to the well-being of our farming, including termites, a pest but also doing tremendous good, breaking down hard, woody matter and taking it down into the soil fertilizing and aerating it at the same time. And also, bringing up useful trace elements and minerals from deep down in the earth. Nature will always know what is best and everything is there for a reason and to achieve a natural balanced productive environment. In spite of the fact that some of it may seem to be off-balance to us humans, the most off balanced of all of nature’s creatures.

We are fortunate that our indigenous Nkone cattle have, throughout their history, adapted to the harsh African climate and pests and have built up a certain amount of natural resistance to many of our parasites and their effects on the cattle. In more modern times (1830), our Gaza Nguni and (1840), our Nguni cattle came from the south-eastern seaboard of Southern Africa, a hot wet humid area renowned for virulent cattle diseases and huge tick and tick-borne disease challenges, creating some degree of resistance over many years in Nguni/Nkone cattle to many of the internal and external parasites and the diseases that they carry.

For our registered herds, calving is now in full swing and every day is exciting, wondering how many will be born from which cows and what they will look like. As always Nkone colouration is unpredictable. One is always on the lookout for that outstanding calf that might go on to achieve great things, but we find that most of our Nkone calves take some time before showing what they are really going to be! It is interesting for me to look back to the herdsmen’s records of cows mated from the bulling season and comparing that to birth dates. I must say, they have been pretty accurate so far.

The rainy season now seems to have set in, the Inter Tropical Convergence Zone hovering over the southern DRC and Zambia. It appears to be a little dry in northern Central and East Africa which sometimes indicates a dry rainy season for them in La Nina years. Hopefully, predictions for a normal to above normal rainy season for us is correct. Being farmers, the next thing we will be worrying about is too much rain!

“NKONE, THE ORIGINAL ALPHA MOTHER COW”