Department of Animal Science

The purpose of this section is to train students to acquire knowledge and skills to enable them develop genetic improvement programs for farm animals, based on genetic principles. It is one of the core sections of the department.

2. Animal physiology and health
The aim of this section is to enable students to evaluate productive performance and understand how the desired performance can be achieved. It also enable students to appreciate how complex it is to maintain the health and welfare of animals.

3. Animal nutrition

The objective is for students to learn about the economic feeding of animals according to their needs. Students also learn to evaluate the digestive, absorptive and metabolic processes in animals and how these influence the nutritive value of feeds and the nutrients requirements of animals. Students are made awe that the optimization of farm animal feeding requires the integration of biological and economic factors and these are associated with the animal, the feed and the environment.

4. Animal Production Systems and Management

The aim is to use a holistic approach to teach students dairy, beef, fat lamb, goat, pig and poultry production. The students should be capable of identifying and solving production problems associated with these systems. Emphasis is placed on small scale farming systems.