The drought is a significant challenge for livestock farmers in Zimbabwe, often leading to severe feed shortages and financial strain. With feed scarcity and rising costs, farmers and stockfeed manufacturers need to adopt economic feeding strategies and effective drought mitigation strategies that ensure the survival of livestock while minimizing costs. By working together and adopting innovative practices, farmers can safeguard their livelihoods and contribute to the resilience of the agricultural sector as a whole. Feedmix’s strategy is to play a vital role in supporting farmers by providing affordable, but quality feed options, and education through value added high-level advice to farmers. The technical support includes nutritional guidance to farmers with information on the nutritional requirements of their livestock and how to balance their diets using their available resources. This can help farmers make informed decisions about feed supplementation and rationing. Feedmix also educates farmers on effective feed management practices, such as on alternative feeding strategies during drought, by maximising on-farm roughage sources and locally sourced by-products and how to stretch their feed resources and maintain livestock performance and health. In achieving its goals, Feedmix collaborates with world-class nutritionists as well as other stakeholders to enhance the reach of their technical advice to equip farmers with practical skills and knowledge, thereby helping farmers survive and thrive during challenging times.

Feedmix further does its utmost best to procure cost effective ingredients for their feed formulations, thereby reducing production costs and creating affordable feed options. Feedmix also invests in research and development to create innovative feed formulations and new feed products that are more resilient to drought conditions. The company specifically focusses on formulating high-quality, nutrient-dense feeds that are both cost-effective and nutritionally balanced and can meet the nutritional needs of livestock for health and productivity during droughts. Thereby, Feedmix ensures that the feed is specifically tailored to the nutritional needs of livestock in Zimbabwe and caters for different livestock species and production stages.

During the current dry period, Feedmix’s goal is ultimately to assist livestock farmers to optimize their economic feeding strategies and enhancing their resilience during these tough times. Such economic feeding strategies focus typically on utilizing on-farm resources, rationing feed, adopting innovative techniques, collaborating with peers, and engaging in financial planning.  

Livestock farmers often face the dilemma of having limited resources to purchase feed while their animals require adequate nutrition to maintain health and productivity. During these challenging times, it is crucial to implement strategies that maximize the use of available resources and minimize costs. Maximizing the use of on-farm resources is one of the most effective ways to mitigate feeding costs during droughts. Farmers should assess what resources are available and how they can be utilized efficiently. Together with limited availability of low-quality pasture, crop residues can be valuable feed resources that farmers can chop and supplement with Feedmix’s minerals and protein products (including feed blocks) specifically developed to enhance their nutritional value. If agricultural by-products, can be sourced by farmers locally, Feedmix could consider that when advising farmers on their total feed rationing and strategic feeding practices to be used as cost-effective feed supplements in conjunction with Feedmix’s concentrated products that would complement such by-product ingredients. During drought, it is essential to stretch all available feed resources. By understanding these needs, Feedmix’s technical team can assist farmers to conduct a thorough custom-made assessment of the specific nutritional programs and help them tailor their feeding strategies accordingly.

Finally, through Feedmix’s involvement in facilitating knowledge transfer the company wants to empower farmers to make informed decisions and gain access to expertise that can lead to the adoption of best practices for feeding during dry periods.