🐄 Cattle Farming

What this course covers

12 modules · 72 written lessons · about 54,775 words · 360 quiz questions · 12 capstone projects.

Every lesson has learning objectives, worked numbers, a "do this today" task and a knowledge check. Videos are free material made by other people; the written lessons are the course.

The Business of Cattle Farming

Most African cattle herds are large in number and small in output. This module puts the honest arithmetic in front of you: the measured gap between communal and commercial calving rates, what a cow that does not calve actually costs you in grass, water, dip and labour, how to calculate a gross margin per cow with your own local prices, and why raising output per cow is usually a bigger lever on income than buying more cattle. It is the argument the rest of the course is built on.

1. Two Businesses Wearing the Same Brand
2. The Number That Decides Everything
3. Why the Calving Rate Is Low
4. What an Unproductive Cow Actually Costs
5. Costing Your Herd Honestly
6. More Cows, or Better Cows?

Open module 1 →

Choosing Your Cattle

The breed you keep decides how much disease, heat and poor grazing your herd can absorb before it stops producing. This module works through the sourced African evidence on Boran, Tuli, Mashona, Nkone, Nguni, Ankole and zebu types against exotics and composites like Bonsmara, and shows why the performance ranking reverses completely between open rangeland and a feedlot. It ends with how to choose a bull for the system your cattle actually live in, rather than for a poster.

1. The Tradeoff That Never Goes Away
2. Boran, the Rangeland Benchmark
3. Tuli, Mashona and the Zimbabwe Numbers
4. Nguni, Ankole and the Zebu Types
5. Exotics and Composites: The Bonsmara Case
6. Choosing the Bull You Will Actually Buy

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The Breeding Herd

The breeding herd exists to produce one thing: a calf from every cow, every year. The evidence says most African cows do not manage it, with communal calving rates measured as low as 15 to 23 percent against 61 percent in the commercial sector of the same country. This module works through the four levers a smallholder actually controls - the bull, the breeding season, the heifer, and the culling decision - and shows why raising calving percentage is almost always worth more than adding cows.

1. The Number That Decides Everything
2. The Bull Is Half the Calf Crop
3. Bull Soundness: The Exam Before the Season
4. Putting the Bull In and Taking Him Out
5. Heifers, Body Condition and the Calving Interval
6. Culling: Removing the Non-Payers

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The Calf Crop

A cow-calf enterprise does not sell milk and does not, in most smallholder systems, finish its own animals. What it sells is a weaned calf, and the kilograms weaned per year are the entire physical output of the breeding herd. This module builds the equation behind that output - cows exposed, calving percentage, calf survival and weaning weight - and works through the calving season, the leak between birth and weaning, the sourced early-weaning trade-off, and how to estimate weight without owning a scale.

1. Weaning Weight Is the Product
2. A Calving Season, Not a Calving Year
3. The Leak Between Calving and Weaning
4. Weaning Age and the Trade-off You Cannot Escape
5. Weighing a Calf Without a Scale
6. Reading Your Own Calf Crop

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Grazing and Rangeland

Grass is the cheapest feed your herd will ever eat, and the land that grows it is the one asset you cannot buy more of. This module teaches the arithmetic of carrying capacity and stocking rate, how to count animals of different sizes in Large Stock Units, what one animal actually removes from your land in a year, why grass needs rest, how bush encroachment quietly steals grazing, and how to read the condition of your own veld instead of trusting a book number. It is about the feed base of the herd, not about mixing a ration - that is the Feed Formulation course.

1. Carrying Capacity and Stocking Rate
2. Counting Your Herd in Large Stock Units
3. What One Animal Removes From Your Land in a Year
4. Rotational Grazing and the Rest Period
5. Bush Encroachment - Grazing You Lose Without Noticing
6. Reading Your Own Veld

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Feeding Through the Dry Season

Inadequate dry-season grazing and feed is named in the research as probably the single most important constraint on African livestock productivity. This module teaches you to see the dry season coming and plan for it in writing: how to build a feed budget in kilograms and days, how to reserve standing grass, what hay and silage can and cannot do for a smallholder, how crop residues and urea treatment of maize stover really perform in the field, and what to do when the plan fails. It covers farm forage and the feed calendar, not ration mixing - building a balanced compounded ration is the Feed Formulation course.

1. Why the Dry Season Decides Your Whole Year
2. Building a Feed Budget in Kilograms and Days
3. Standing Hay - Grass Banked in the Field
4. Cut Hay and Silage - What They Do and What This Course Will Not Tell You
5. Crop Residues and the Truth About Urea Treatment
6. When the Plan Fails - Destocking and Emergency Weaning

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Water: The Input Nobody Budgets For

Water restriction acts faster than feed shortage. An animal that cannot drink enough will eat less within days, and less eaten is less weaned. This module teaches you to treat water as a planned, measured, costed input rather than something that is simply there: how to measure your own herd's real intake from a trough instead of relying on a table, what distance to water costs you in growth, how to judge your sources against the driest month rather than the wettest, and how to plan herd size against the supply you can actually rely on.

1. Why Water Acts Faster Than Feed
2. The Litres-Per-Day Table This Course Will Not Give You
3. Measuring Your Own Herd's Intake at the Trough
4. Distance to Water - The Cost You Never See
5. Where Your Water Comes From, and When It Fails
6. Putting Water Into the Herd Plan

Open module 7 →

Herd Health One: The Tick-Borne Complex

Tick-borne disease is the defining animal-health problem of African cattle. East Coast fever alone is estimated to kill around a million cattle a year, and heartwater can kill up to 90 percent of susceptible stock. This module teaches the four diseases that make up the complex - East Coast fever, anaplasmosis, babesiosis and heartwater - what each one costs even in the animals that survive it, how tick control through dipping or spraying actually works, why acaricide resistance is destroying that tool, and how to cost a control decision instead of guessing at it.

1. Why Ticks Decide the Health of African Cattle
2. East Coast Fever and What It Costs the Survivors
3. Gallsickness, Redwater and Heartwater
4. Dipping and Spraying - How Tick Control Actually Works
5. Acaricide Resistance - The Tool You Can Wear Out
6. Costing the Decision - Dip, Vaccinate, or Pay for the Losses

Open module 8 →

Herd Health, Part Two: Worms, Vaccines and the Diseases You Must Report

Ticks are not the whole of cattle health. This module covers the internal parasites that quietly steal weaning weight, how a vaccination plan is actually built around the life stage of an animal, the fly-borne disease that closes a third of Africa to unprotected cattle, and the three diseases that stop being your private business the moment you suspect them: foot-and-mouth, anthrax and brucellosis. Two of those three can kill you, not just your cattle, and this module tells you plainly what to do and what never to do.

1. Worms: The Loss You Cannot See
2. Building a Vaccination Plan by Life Stage
3. Trypanosomiasis and the Tsetse Belt
4. Anthrax: The Carcass You Must Never Open
5. Foot-and-Mouth Disease: The Disease That Closes Markets
6. Brucellosis: The Hidden Cause of Lost Calves

Open module 9 →

Handling Cattle and Building the Facilities

Cattle are large, powerful animals and bulls kill people. This module covers the two enclosures every beef enterprise needs and why they are not the same thing, the measured dimensions of a working crush and race, the procedures that keep handlers alive, and the two routine procedures - castration and dehorning - where doing it early costs the animal far less than doing it late. A simple crush is one of the highest-value safety investments a growing herd can make, and this module tells you what to build and how to work it.

1. Two Enclosures, Two Different Jobs
2. The Crush, the Race and the Pens: Real Dimensions
3. Bulls Kill People
4. Moving Cattle Without a Fight
5. Castration: Age Matters More Than the Tool
6. Making the Facility Pay for Itself

Open module 10 →

Identification, Records and Knowing Your Own Herd

Every decision this course has taught - which cow to cull, which calf is growing, which animal was dosed last month - depends on being able to tell one animal from another, reliably, over years. This module covers how cattle are identified, what a beef producer must record, and a notebook system that costs nothing. It ends with the short list of numbers a farmer should be able to state about their own cattle without looking anything up, because a farmer who cannot state them is negotiating and culling blind.

1. A Herd You Cannot Tell Apart Cannot Be Managed
2. Ear Tags, Hot Irons and Freeze Brands
3. What a Beef Producer Must Actually Record
4. The Notebook: One Page Per Animal, One Line Per Event
5. The Numbers You Should Be Able to State Without Looking
6. Turning Records Into Decisions

Open module 11 →

Marketing and the Money

A calf you raised well can still be sold badly, and the difference goes into somebody else's pocket. This module covers the choice between selling per head and selling on measured weight, how to estimate an animal's weight with a tape before you negotiate, what auctions and graded carcass markets actually reward, and how a disease outbreak can close a market for farmers whose own cattle were never sick. It ends with the gross margin per cow and the growth plan - the arithmetic that decides whether your next investment should be more cows or better ones.

1. Per Head or By Weight: The Choice That Costs Most
2. The Girth Tape: Knowing the Weight Before the Buyer Does
3. Auctions, Single Buyers and Presentation
4. Live Weight, Carcass Weight and Grading
5. The Market You Can Lose Overnight
6. Gross Margin Per Cow and the Growth Plan

Open module 12 →