Especially in the coastal zone, former fields were sometimes converted to private pastures which were of great importance for the herds' fodder supply during the dry season.
This is related to the fact that men are involved in activities such as herding and fodder collection; hence, they may be better placed to observe emergence of new species.
We recommend developing a comprehensive livestock management policy that includes elaborate provisions on reducing livestock losses through livestock herd management, stock improvement, fodder development, pasture development, and sustainable livestock insurance schemes.
Now most of his failed crop is only useful as fodder for his herd.
Cheikh Tijani lives in the middle of a plain used as fodder for his herd.
Pastoralist households with large herds but do not produce fodder tend to remain mobile especially in the dry seasons when pasture scarcity greatly limits livestock production.
As adaptation measures (Table 5), the respondents feed livestock with crop residue (98.4 %) and concentrate feed (80.6 %), practise herd destocking (44.8 %), use woody fodder (42.3 %) and engage in off-farm activities (30.2 %), haymaking (30.1 %) and transhumance (19.8 %).
The major influence has been through fire, which has been used deliberately in herding game, in rejuvenating plants used for fodder, in opening forested plots for agriculture, in maintaining savannas and grasslands, and in keeping forests open for easy passage for hunting.
The reason cited by pastoralists is to seek enough fodder and water for their herds.
Farmers herded their goats to graze native grasses, fodder trees and shrubs in the hills of communal land and roadsides during the rainy season (July to October), which is a period when goats were dried off from milking (Figure 5).
The enclosures provide fodder banks for the owners' herds during the dry periods, feedlots for fattening livestock for sale and fodder and grass seed for sale to other farmers for income (KRDP/ASAL DM 2012; Meyerhoff 2012; Channer 2013; Odunga 2013).
