Asian Research Journal of Current Science

This study was aimed to investigate the effect of husbandry and management system on camel leather production and quality in North Kordofan, Sudan. For the study purpose a questionnaire was designed and distributed randomly for 60 camel breeders in North Kordofan State. The data was analyzed using frequencies and percentages. The results revealed that, all respondents confirm that the open system depending on natural grazing was the main husbandry and management system in all study target area. Also they confirm the open system is suitable for rearing camel for its benefits and cheapest as a feeding system. autumn camels in North Kordofan depends totally on natural pasture grazing (89.3%), while in winter camels partly fed on natural grazing (25%) and most breeders (73.3%) complete it's feeding depending on the litter that remained from food crops after harvesting. 51.7% of North Kordofan camel breeder in summer are using their stock of forage hay that collected either during the rainy season from good growing autumn pastures or from agricultural byproducts such as sorghum and sesame straw. The additional diets is varies by the variation of North Kordofan camel locations. Sometimes when forage are limited and for marketing purposes camel breeders adding little amount or uncountable amount of sorghum grains, cotton seed cakes, groundnut seed cake as concentrated finisher diet beside agricultural byproducts such as sorghum byproduct hay and sesame byproduct hay. Respondents return only 8.3% of mechanical damages on camel hides to spinal bushes. There were some other factors causes camel hide's damages with different degrees such as housing fences (18.3%). The majority of camel hides (95%) were evaluated depending on defects; where 3.3% of camel hides were evaluated depending on the weight and size. Similarly, few camel hides were evaluated depending on size alone. Common flaying defects were resulting mostly from scars and cuts (46% for each). Hot iron branding reducing about 55.55% of camel hides quality to the second grade. While 11.12% of tribal hot brands were detracting deeply the grading of camel hides to third and fourth grade (reject grade). Mange and pox diseases were the most common diseases which cause damages to 41.7% and 33.3% of camel hides respectively. Ticks infection was the most common external parasites to camel hide which resulting in (91.7%) of damages.