Feed for the cattle?
A paper by John Kang’ara and Josiah Gitari, animal nutritionists at KARI, concludes that Opuntia species — the prickly pear or paddle cacti — have extreme tolerance to drought and remain succulent and easily digestible even in times of extreme water shortages, which makes them an excellent source of water and nutrition in harsh conditions.
They found that during a severe drought in 2008–2009, farmers who fed their cattle the cactus paddles (the large, leaf-like parts) lost none of their cattle to drought.
Meanwhile, some farmers, such as the Masai pastoralists in Laikipia North refused to use the cactus as feed and even pleaded with the government to eradicate what they consider to be an invading weed.
I remember reading about in Australia how certain very spiny opuntia escaped and naturalized, and the cattle would eat them during drought and be harmed by the spines. I guess you need a low-spine variety for cattle, or remove the spines yourself before feeding them.
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August 1st, 2010 at 9:28 am
The story I read noted that the rancher was burning the cactus spines off.
The Masai look like they aren’t adapting here, but the truth is, they don’t have access to that kind of burnable that they can spare to use to process cattle feed.
August 29th, 2010 at 2:45 pm
This reminds me of a book I once read when I was about seven mor eight years old. It said that ranchers would feed cactus pads to their cattle after burning off the spines by passing them through a fire. This would have been an excellent5 way to be sure that they had got rid of those pesky glochids.