There are two sources of
fodder trees in Nepal, namely private and community forest. The trees that are
grown on and around farmland, terrace risers, kharbari, and khet land are
regarded as private fodder, and the other type includes the trees from natural
forest areas, community plantations and community forests. The management of
these trees varies greatly from place to place, even at the household level,
depending upon resources, techniques and time availability. Community forestry
is a successful participatory approach for forest protection and management in
Nepal. Until now, about 850,000 hectares forests of Nepal have been handed over
to eleven thousand forest user groups. Forest products such as tree and grass
fodder, fuelwood and timber etc are used to meet user's subsistence needs and
to generate income from the sale.
Community fodder
resources are generally derived from the natural forest near the village, where
people have excercised their traditional rights of forest use since first
domesticating animals. These forests are gradually being registered with
District Forest Offices and are being converted into Community Forests.
Deforested areas are replanted as Community Plantations. Most of the forest
fodder is comprised of tree leaves (eg. Quercus spp., Terminalia spp.),
shrubs (Flemingia spp., Phyllanthus parvifolius) bamboos (Arundinaria
spp.) and climbers (Bauhinia vahlii). Pandey (1982) reported more
than thirty families of trees being used for fodder in Nepal.
Palatable tree species,
including shrubs, and bamboo, that are fed to or browsed by animals are called
fodder trees. Referred to as tree fodder, they are an important animal feed
resource in Nepal particularly during the dry winter, when green grasses are
not available. Livestock diets are usually composed of green grasses, crop
by-products or fodder trees, with little or no concentrate feed. Over 50% of
the total fodder supply comes from forest resources with forest trees supplying
20%. Fodder trees also provide significant amounts (15–29%) of crude protein.
Fodder is usually fed as a supplement to crop by-products or grass, because
although its production is limited, it is regarded as a high milk producing
forage with high palatability. Thus, species such as Artocarpus
lakoocha, Premna integrifolia, and Ficus semicordata are fed to
lactating animals.
There is little conscious
effort on the part of farmers or official organisations to plant the most
productive species of fodder tree, and little work has been done to determine
what the yields of fodder trees are in terms of total biomass. Those studies
that have been undertaken, show that great variation exists, even within single
species.
There is also little
information available about the quality and nutritive value of fodder trees in
Nepal. Researchers and scientists have to depend upon farmers' traditional
knowledge to gather such information. The great diversity of species used for fodder
must mean there are large variations in nutritive value. This may serve to
explain the common practice of feeding a combination of species, which may
result in better nutritive value than feeding a single species.
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