Dairy Production in Western and North-Western Zones of Tigray, Ethiopia
Desale Gebretsadik, Abrehaley Tikue, Teklemariam Abadi, Gebrekiros Maru, Danial Desta

Abstract
This study identifies the dairy productivity and production in North western and Western zone of Tigray region using both secondary and primary data sources collected from survey, KII and FGD so that cross-sectional data type that was collected during 2018. This study employed multi-stage sampling technique to withdraw Tahtay adiyabo district from North western zone and Kafta humera district from Western zone where a total of 309 smallholder dairy cattle keepers (farmers) who were selected randomly from both districts. Applying the descriptive statistics on average farmers owned 2.7 and 4 number of dairy cows with the average yield per cow per day of 2.53 and 3.33Lt milked for the average number of 27 and 26 days per month respectively for Tahtay adiyabo and Kafta humera districts. The average number of milking months was 6.3 and 6.4 so that the total milk produced was 1166.25Lt and 2291.29Lt per household produced at the total expense of 5556.8 and 10538.4ETB respectively for Tahtay adiyabo and Kafta humera districts. In Tahtay adiyabo district, 50% of the respondents totally allocated the milk they obtained for family consumption while in Kafta humera district 70.5% of the respondents had allocated the milk they obtained for both family consumption and partly for selling. It has also found that the family consumed 70.86% and 57.35% of the total amount of milk taken-off, while the remaining 29.14% and 42.65% has sold at local market, respectively for Tahtay adiyabo and Kafta humera districts. So this study recommends that it is important to organize producers as nearby and establish and make functional cooperatives so that producers could sell at their nearby. It is also important that dairy cows should provide collected feed while in its shed for the months other than green feed grazed in rangeland and supplement by improved forages. It will also be important if collected feed could provide to the dairy cows with the intensive protection from diseases and pests.

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