An industrial training report carried out at national animal genetic resource centre and data bank (NAGRC & DB) Kasolwe stock farm.

Abstract

The objective of this industrial training is to make students benefit from the skills and knowledge gained from the fields, apply the knowledge they got from the classroom in the field and build confidence in the students. I held my internship at Kasolwe Stock Farm from the 28th of February 2022 to 6th May 2022. KSF is a government farm with five main enterprises i.e.; cattle, poultry, piggery, aquaculture and nutrition. It is aimed at training farmers to produce high quality and quantity milk, beef, pork, eggs, chicken, fish and feeds. The major activities include; Pond construction, sexing, sampling, grading, feeding, pond maintenance under aquaculture section, Census, disinfection of all units, inspection, treatment, isolation of sick birds, feeding, cleaning poultry units, collecting eggs, litter management, replacement of the disinfectant, assembling and installation of the hatchery in the poultry section, Feed formulation, feed mixing, postharvest handling and pasture establishment in the nutrition section, Castration, pregnancy diagnosis, branding, deworming, artificial insemination, dipping, census and verification, inspection treatment, ear tagging in the cattle section, goats and piggery section. These activities have made me to gain a lot of skills and knowledge such as feed rationing and mixing of different animal feeds both manually and mechanically using the feed mill at the feed plant, sexing of fish that is tilapia, mirror carp and cat fish to differentiate male from female, construction of a pond by digging, sampling of fish using a fry net, grading of fish according to species, size and health, maggot production for feed formulation and pregnancy diagnosis in cattle. During internship, I also face some challenges like language barrier with some of the staff, lack of hostels at the farm, insufficient pastures, long distance moved to the farm, poor infrastructures like calf pen units and employment of professionals who can speak common language, speeding up construction of hostels, renovation of poor infrastructures, planting pastures and pasture preservation were some of the possibilities. In conclusion all the activities were implemented and industrial training was carried out successfully. I was able to gain a lot from it. I was in position of getting practical skills and knowledge in line with my career and relating with people in the field. Much as all were successfully done, there were also some little challenges which hindered the smooth running of the activities making me recommend that more animal husbandry officers should be trained to guide and advise farmers who are facing hardships in production and management.