ILCA working document - Reproductive losses in small ruminants in Sub-Saharan Africa: A review













Table of Contents


K.P. ABASSA

1995

International Development Research Centre
PO. Box 8500, Ottawa, Canada K1G 3H9

International Livestock Centre for Africa
P.O. Box 5689, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

This working document has not been prepared in accordance with the formal publication procedures of ILCA. Data, interpretations and conclusions are those of the authors and subject to revision.

International Development Research Centre (IDRC)

International Livestock Centre for Africa (ILCA)

This electronic document has been scanned using optical character recognition (OCR) software and careful manual recorrection. Even if the quality of digitalisation is high, the FAO declines all responsibility for any discrepancies that may exist between the present document and its original printed version.


Table of Contents


Chapter I. Introduction

Background
Economic importance of small ruminants in SSA
Population growth and meat production of small ruminants in SSA
References for chapter I

Chapter II. Reproductive performance of small ruminants in sub-Saharan Africa

Fertility and parturition interval
Prolificacy and twinning rate
Fecundity
Age at first parturition
References for chapter II

Chapter III. Prenatal wastage

Fertilization failure
Fertilization failure due to lack or quality of stud male
Fertilization failure due to high temperature
Fertilization failure due to light body weight
Embryo mortality
High temperatures as cause of embryo mortality
Effect of genotype on embryo mortality
Effect of undernutrition on embryo mortality
Foetal losses
Estimates of foetal losses
Causes of abortions and stillbirths

Abortifacient diseases
Nutrition and season
Dam age, litter size, parturition interval and genotype
Embryonic and foetal loss due to slaughter of pregnant females

References for chapter III

Chapter IV. Post-natal losses

Neonatal mortality

Lamb neonatal mortality
Rid neonatal mortality

Preweaning mortality

Estimates of kid preweaning mortality
Estimates of lamb preweaning mortality
Causes of kid preweaning mortality
Causes of lamb preweaning mortality

Post-weaning mortality

Estimates of post-weaning mortality
Causes of post-weaning mortality

References for chapter IV

Chapter V. Conclusions and recommendations

Major findings
Some possible interventions

Acronyms and abbreviations