Cattle production on downward trajectory

The results of the latest survey produced by Statistics Botswana indicate that cattle population dropped from 1.3 million in 2015 to 1.1million in 2017 due to an increase in cattle lost due to stray as well as stock theft. As of 2017, about 83,901cattle were lost compared to 8, 571 recorded in 2015 due to the two factors.

The report further pointed that cattle birth rate decreased from 57.9 percent to 50.5 percent in the reference period, which might also had contributed to reduced cattle population in 2017. Cattle mortality rate also declined from 7.1 percent to 6.2 percent and off-take rate from 6.6 percent to 5.7 percent between 2015 and 2017 respectively.