Goat productivity under smallholder farmer management in semi-arid and hot-humid parts of Zimbabwe: a useful step for building resilient goat production systems in marginalized communities

Information about on-farm goat productivity patterns is crucial for building resilient production systems in marginalised communities. Goat flock dynamics, management practices and production constraints in selected smallholder farming systems of Zimbabwe were explored. A multistage sampling approach was adopted to recruit a total of 200 participants. The effect of environment on productive indices and constraints was analysed using the Mann-Whitney U test and either Ordinal or Nominal logistic regression, respectively, in IBM SPSS version 26. Results highlight the importance of goats to rural communities. On average, 10.01 ± 5.14 goats were maintained per capita and the largest proportion was found in hot-humid environments (p > 0.05). However, reproductive performance in terms of average gestation length (4. 47 ± 0.59 months), age at first service (11.20 ± 2.24 months) and kidding (15.67 ± 2.30 months) was poorer in semi-arid environments than in the hot-humid areas (p > 0.05). Moreover, optimum productivity is hampered by a multitude of factors, including selection of breeding animals mainly based on personal appraisal (Index = 0.120), dependence of animals primarily on natural forages for feed (Index = 0.213), sub-optimal housing conditions like irregular cleaning (Index = 0.123) and disease preponderance (Index = 0.129). Ailments were mainly controlled using ethnoveterinary medicines (Index = 0.103). Taken together, our results underline the crucial role of goats to rural livelihoods, which could be elevated even more through community-based capacity building on proper animal husbandry practices in terms of breeding, nutrition, health and housing management.