IJERD – International Journal of Environmental and Rural Development (2015) 6-2

Research article
erdWorking with Ethnic Group: A Case Study of Introducing
Pig Fattening to Garay Ethnicity in Ouyadav District,Ratanakiri Province
PHEM MENGHAK*
Royal University of Agriculture, Phnom Penh, Cambodia
Email: menghak44@yahoo.com

THIM SOKHARoyal University of Agriculture, Phnom Penh, Cambodia

THENG KOUCH
Royal University of Agriculture, Phnom Penh, Cambodia

SENG MOM
Royal University of Agriculture, Phnom Penh, Cambodia
Received 15 December 2014

Accepted 8 April 2015(*Corresponding Author)

Absract Ratanakiri is remotely located in northeast of Cambodia about 600 km from
Phnom Penh. Pig production of Garay ethnicity was challenged with poor feeding and highrisk of mortality. The study aimed to compare the effect of feed supplement, estimate theeconomic efficiency, and study the adoption of target group to the demonstrated experiment
pig fattening. A group discussion was launched to select 5 volunteer farmers from eachvillage who met the criteria. The chosen farmers were trained on pig fattening process.
Each of them had been subsidized two piglets; hand in hand pen construction, and feed
supplements for 4 months. Some information was informally interviewed to understand thecurrent feeding and management; and determine the suitable interventions. Farmers werethen randomly allocated into two treatments, viz. T0 (Control group – free range feeding)and T1 (Supplement group – 40% concentrates, 30% rice bran, 30% cassava chip).The
growth rate was recorded every 2 weeks for 4 months. After a 7-month period, all adopted
farmers were interviewed by using questionnaire for impact study. The results have shown
significant 3-fold improvement in daily average weight gain of improved diet groupalthough the economic efficiency of the two groups did not differ. After seven months ofinterventions on the ground, some changes were observed. For example, 80% of theselected farmers kept pigs in pens regularly and started to utilized local available feeds.
Thirty percent was willing to buy commercial feeds. All management tasks were done 50%,40%, 10% by wives, husbands, and children, respectively. Vaccination was not totally
implemented by them. We concluded that our interventions have changed some behaviorsof focused famers and neighbors on the production in terms of management practices andfeeding for pig fattening. More feeding options need to be assessed for better economicefficiencies.
Keywords fattening pig product on, productivity, intervention, Garay ethnicity

INTRODUCTION
Ratanakiri province is located in the northeast of Cambodia. It borders with Laos PDR to the westand Vietnam to the east. The province is located about 600 km from Phnom Penh and the averageannual temperature is in the range of 26-31 o C. Ethnic Group was the main target of the study;
there is Garay ethnicity contributing totally 98% of population in Ka Te and Samkaninh villages ofLumchor and Soam Thom communities, respectively belonging to Ouyadav district selected asstudied area. The main jobs of villagers are cassava and rice cropping, animal husbandry (moreⒸ ISERD

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IJERD – International Journal of Environmental and Rural Development (2015) 6-2

noted as local breeds), as well as forestry such as hunter and labor work (RPDA, 2010). InCambodia, pig raising is one of the sources of income for farmers through selling of pigs, pork, andprocessed pork, which are good sources of protein (Sorn, 2011). 92.81% of Pig production was
conducted by smallholder in 2010 and this percentage decreased to 84.87% in 2013 due to rising ofdisease outbreak and low profit when selling to the market (DAHP, 2013). In general, small scale
animal production depends on locally available feed resources such as rice bran, broken rice, sugar
cane tops, sweet potato vines, cassava roots, and kitchen waste; while commercial feeds are rarely
used due to high cost. The proportion of commercial feed used is about 20 % of pig smallholder,
while the remaining 80 % depends on mainly crop residues and farm by-products, which are often
poor quality and low nutritional value (Khieu et al., 1996). Biosecurity is defined as theimplementation of creation the barrier to prevent most contamination and infection by segregation,cleaning, and disinfectant; the practices depend on production system concerned, the local
geographic and socio-economic (FAO & OIE, 2010). However in Ratanakiri, the pigs of the ethnic
group are freely raised, challenging poor feeding, no deworming and vaccination programs;
resulting to high risk of diseases and mortality. In addition, due to land converting from forestrycovered to agro-industry land such as rubber farm, cassava, and so on; less scavenging areas areavailable. This leads farmers to hesitate to increase number of pigs, or even continue their raising.
The introduction of pig fattening by concentrating diet supplemented to local basal diet, and proper
management and bio-security (pig housing, deworming, and vaccination) by farmers would be asolution to overcome the constraints; while pig production performance and farmers’ income wouldbe improved. The farmtrials in this paper employ hypothesis testing and lessonlearn methods tostudy the adoption of new techniques of participating famers and neighboring ones.
OBJECTIVESThe study aimed to compare the effect of feed supplements, estimate the economic efficiency, andstudy the adoption of the target ethnic group to new techniques of the demonstrated experiment ofpig fattening.
METHODOLOGY
There are 2 steps in this study: the first is to select the focused group and set up a trial of pig
fattening, and the second is evaluation of farmer adoption.
Farmer Selection
Ka Te and Samkaninh villages were selected as the studied areas based on the ethnic resident thatis 98% of Garay group. The discussions were conducted with local authority about farmers’situation in the selected villages. Farmer meetings were set up to introduce the project purposes andactivities in each village. The selection of volunteer farmers to join the project was done during themeetings. Then, all willing farmers’ houses were visited to observe their resources. The criteria ofselecting the farmers were as follows: be ethnic group, willing to work, have available labors andhouse-area for constructing the pig pen, and grow some vegetables for the pigs. The household
heads that were women, widows, and disable people were also encouraged to participate. After all
criteria were met, the selected farmers were trained on fattening pig production, breed and breed
selection, feed and feeding, housing, and bio-security.
Experimental Design
The selected farmers were assigned into 2 treatments as shown in Table 2, with five replications(farmers), and two piglets were distributed to each farmer. The two treatments were: T0: control
group by supplementing rice bran and T1: supplement group: supplementing concentrates at 40%
with cassava chip 30%, and rice bran 30%, mixed with farmer’s basal diet.
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Table 1 Feed supplementation
GroupDuration
Quantity for 2 piglets (kg/day)
Piglets (heads)
Crude Protein (%)

T0 (Control)
Jul-Aug
Sep-Oct
0.4
0.5
10
9.5 %

T1 (Supplement)
Jul-Aug
Sep-Oct
0.8
1.01020.5 %Piglet Housing and Distribution
After completed the training course, pig pens were constructed by full participation from farmers toimprove their understanding about pig pen. The method was learning by doing as they had noexperience to construct the pen before. The pen size was 2 meters in width and 3.5 meters in lengthwith concrete floor, iron sheet roof, and wooden barred to protect the piglets out. Twenty local
breed piglets of three months old were bought from nearby villages, and then they were randomly
distributed to volunteer farmers. The initial piglet-weigh in both groups was non-significant as: T0
was 6.39 ± 0.38 kg and T1 was 6.41 ± 0.36 kg.
Feed and Feeding for Pig Fattening
Concentrate feed was used as a part of supplement diet to show farmers how much feed richprotein could improve the growth performance of their pigs. The basal diet of both groups wasbased on locally available feed resources such as taro stem, banana stalk, sweet potato vines,pumpkin, papaya and vegetables. Feeds for supplement of both groups were packed for 1-time
feeding to be mixed with basal diet.
Management and Bio-security
In order to introduce the farmers, some parts of bio-security were implemented; the pens weredisinfectant by applying commercial calcium bicarbonate, cleaned by boiled water 100 0C after 1day period, and piglets were kept in individual pens with drinking nipples. All the pigs werevaccinated against hog cholera disease, treated with an anti-parasitic drug (Ivomic given byinjection) at the first week of keeping and beyond after one month next. Pigs were fed 2-3 times per
day depending on available time of the farmers.
Table 2 Vaccination
Date
27/07/2013
27/08/2013

Piglet Age
3 months
4 months

Vacine namePest Porcine
Pest Porcine

Disease
Hog Cholera
Hog Cholera

UsageMuscle injection
Muscle injection

Data Collection and Analysis
The piglets were weighed every two weeks in the morning before feeding. Feed supplementary andfeed refusals were daily recorded. All data were recorded using Microsoft Office excel 2010. The
study of farmers’ adoption was conducted by questionnaire 3 months after the experiment finished.
In every 2 weeks, growth performance deviation was analyzed by using Independent Sample T-test
Statistics of SPSS version 18. The adoption data from the questionnaire was analyzed by Microsoft
Excel to calculate the descriptive statistics and to design graphic.
Chemical Analysis
Samples of feed supplement—concentrated feed, rice bran, cassava chips, were collected from thearea of study and analyzed for Dry matter (DM) and Nitrogen (N), according to Undersander et al.
(1993) and AOAC (1990), respectively.
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IJERD – International Journal of Environmental and Rural Development (2015) 6-2

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Table 3 Average daily gain of pig (Gram/day/head)GroupNo.
1Control

2SupplementN10

Mean
86.25

Std. Deviation
16.36

10277.59

26.05

P. value
0.00

The supplementation group had higher daily weight gain than control group, piglets insupplementation group had ADG at 277.59 ± 26.05 gram per day (P<0.001) as shown in Table 3.
Comparing to the study of Phengsavanh et al. (2013), as providing the concentrated feed containing
CP 20 % on Growing Local Breed gave an average daily gain at 263.5 gram/day. Yin (2008)
showed that cross breed of local and exotic breed fed by normal food of famers (rice bran andkitchen waste), provides growth performance at 82.00 ± 9.36 gram/day; and another groupsupplemented commercial concentrated feed 15% of live body weight (LBW) provided up to313.00 ± 18.00 gram/day.

Percentage (%)

100806040200

Pre-Trial (%)

Post-Trial (%)

Fig. 1 Feed used as Pig’s food pre-intervention and post-intervention
Before starting this study, the Garay ethnicity has raised their pigs by letting them freely
scavenge with poor feeding. Pigs were fed irregularly depending on the convenience of owners.
After 7 months of participatory with the study, the focused farmers have been utilizing someavailable local materials to feed their pigs such as banana stalk, taro stem, cassava root, cassavavine, spinach, pumpkin vine, pumpkin fruit, amaranth, sweet potato, and forages (Stylo 184), ricebran, kitchen waste, and other local vegetables as shown in Fig. 1.

Fig. 2 Family participation in pig productionⒸ ISERD

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The Garay live traditionally, as men work on farm. All housework and taking care children
are done by women. Normally, women are not allowed to make any decision. During the training,
women were encouraged to work for pig fattening program and actively contact with theresearchers to increase their social rights in terms of gender equality. Figure 2 shows that most of
pig raising processes were done by women 50 %, men 40 %, and children 10 %.
90Percentage (%)

100
80

80

9060

60304030

30

200Fig. 3 Farmer adoption to component intervention
During the study, farmers kept their pigs in pens, and regularly fed 2-3 times a day. Two autodrinking machines were broken by pig biting, whereas the rest 80 % could be used. Every morning,
farmers cleaned the pens and pigs. These tasks were handled by children when the farmers were
not available. Some farmer houses had a machine, which eased cleaning process. However, thevaccination and deworming process were complained by farmers, as it was expected to be done bya national program.
30 (%)
Rice Bran + Basal Diet (%)

Concentrated Feed + Basal Feed (%)
70 %Fig. 4 Feed used during adoption study
The commercial feed is too expensive and the market is far from the village, causing farmers
burdens to travel or buy as pig diet. As shown in Fig. 4., most of the farmers have used the ricebran mixed with vegetables, whereas there were three farmers who have bought the commercial
feed for their pigs.
Estimated Economic Efficiency
The economic efficiency between two groups was not much different. For Group T1,
supplementing by the concentrate feed was less economic than the result of using expensive
commercial concentrate feed. The commercial feed was not recommended to use as pig foodbecause feed conversion ratio (FCR) of local pig is a limitation.
CONCLUSION
The use of commercial feed supplement for pig production improved the growth performance butits expensive price caused non-economic production. On-farm experiment would help farmers tounderstand the real condition.

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Table 4 Economic efficiency of control and supplement group
T0 (Control)
Items

Unit

Piglets
FoodMedication
HousingDrinker
Grand expense
Gross Income
Economic efficiency

heads
Kg
per cycle
per cycle
per cycle
USDUSD(%)

Price/unit(USD)
15.00
0.23
0.50
2.65
0.38
2.13

T1 (Supplement)

Number

Price

10500
101010150
112.5
5
26.5
3.75
297.75341.061.15

160.5

Price/unit(USD)
150.54
0.5
2.65
0.38
2.13

NumberPrice

101000101010150
540
5
26.5
3.75
725.25796.881.10375Knowledge that they gained could be more effective for making decision with considerationof process that was applicable for their areas. Some techniques and complicated process such as
vaccination made farmers hesitate to follow; hence, they always thought the government would
support it. Moreover, the information from this on-farm practice was rare to be done forsmallholder farmers. Otherwise, further study should focus more on on-farm experiment withfarmers, who have less understanding of how to involve their livestock production to newtechnology.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Much grateful to CIAT and IFIAD for fund support, and all professors and lecturers of Animal
Science Faculty and all staff at Center for Livestock Development Studies for critical commentand document support, senior researcher from Department of Animal Health and Production andRatanakiri Provincial Department of Agriculture for suggestion and physical contribution into thestudy.
REFERENCES
Association of Official Analytical Chemists (AOAC). 1990. Official methods of analysis, 15th edition (KHelrick editor) Arlington, 1230.
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Sorn, S. 2011. Cambodia swine industry profile. National veterinary research institute (NaVRI), Departmentof animal health and production, Phnom Penh, Cambodia.
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Yin, R. 2008. Using of concentrate feed (GF: 74A) on homemade feed for growing fattening pig. Bsc. thesis,
Faculty of Animal Science and Veterinary Medicine, Royal University of Agriculture, Cambodia.

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