Ethiopia is the largest livestock producer in Africa, with 70.79 million heads of cattle, 28.48 million sheep, 25.91 million goats, 24.56 million donkeys, 11.39 million horses, 8.08 million mules, 8.39 million camels, and 42.51 million poultry. The largest livestock were found in Oromiya, Amhara and South Nations and Nationalities of People regions. However, the production of livestock is low due to technical constraints to livestock development like absence of approved livestock policy, lack of rural infrastructure and services, inadequate specialists and skilled staff, feed constraints, prevalent animal diseases, grazing land shortage, lack of credit, poor management, low genetic quality of most indigenous breed, recurrent drought, and lack of technical skill on feeding.
Feed problem is one of the major factors that hinders the development and expansion of livestock production in Ethiopia. Natural grazing land is the predominant feed sources for livestock in lowland and crop residues represent a large proportion of feed resource in mixed crop livestock system of Ethiopia.
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