Abstract

The study was aimed at evaluating the rearing practice and growth performance of heifer calves in urban and peri-urban dairy systems of Sebeta Awas Wereda, Oromia National Regional State, Ethiopia. Stratified random sampling method was used to select target farms and sample respondents for the prepared questionnaire. Farms for monitoring study was selected from data collected during the survey. Eighteen farms, which had crossbred dairy heifer calves of (3-6 months of age), were purposively selected from both production systems and across the entire herd size category. Eighteen heifer calves were monitored from 18 different farms (2 production systems*3 farm sizes *3 replicates). The overall average crossbred dairy herd size per household was 10.6+2.1 in urban and 11.3+2 in peri-urban area, where, the proportion of heifers accounted for 50.5% for urban and 48.8% for peri-urban farms of their respective total herds.