Forage Legumes for Livestock in Ghana

The protein gap that arrives with the harmattan

By February the grass along the road is the colour of a biscuit, the goats are walking further for less, and the sheep have started to look like coat hangers. Every farmer who keeps ruminants in Ghana knows this stretch of the year. The grass is still there, but it is mostly stem and dead leaf, and the protein in it has dropped to a level that will not keep a growing animal or a pregnant ewe in good order.

That gap is what forage legumes are for. A legume plant puts its energy into leaves, and the leaves carry more protein, more minerals and more digestible material than the mature grass beside them. The same is true of many crop residues, but residues are a fixed amount that comes off the field once a year. A legume planted as a crop can be cut again and again, and it keeps its leaves into the dry season if it was sown early enough.

The Ministry of Food and Agriculture and its livestock officers have promoted forage legumes for years, but adoption on small farms is patchy. Most farmers have heard of stylo or gliricidia and few have a block of either. The rest of this article is about getting one started on your own land and feeding it sensibly, without assuming that a legume patch will solve everything.

Forage legumes also matter on a mixed farm. A goat herd, a few sheep and a flock of birds can all share the same plot of legume hay, as long as you keep the rations separate and do not put raw legume where a chick can get at it. Our feeding goats guide covers the broader ration, and this article fills in the legume part.

What a legume gives the animal, and what it does not

Legumes carry protein in their leaves, and they carry the bacteria that fix nitrogen from the air into the root nodules. That second point is the one that matters for the land. A stand of legumes leaves the soil richer for the crop that follows, which is why many farmers plant them as a break between maize years. The first point matters for the animal, because a goat on poor grass with access to legume leaves gets a better protein intake without a bag of concentrate.

Leaves are where the value is. Stems, especially the woody stems of mature lablab or cowpea, are much less digestible, and an animal left to pick through old stalk will waste a good share of what you grew. Cut at the stage when the plant is still leafy and just starting to flower. A cut that waits until the pods are full gives you more fibre and less protein for the same weight of hay.

Legumes do not supply much energy compared with maize or cassava, and they are no substitute for a salt and mineral supply. Animals on a legume-heavy diet still need water, shade and a licked block or a mineral mix that suits your area. Ask your livestock officer what the local soil and grass lack, because the answer changes from district to district.

One more point: fresh legumes can cause bloat in ruminants. The gas that builds up in the rumen can become trapped, and the animal becomes distended and distressed. Bloat is a serious condition, and it is one reason to introduce legume slowly and to avoid turning animals onto a wet, lush stand on an empty stomach.

Stylo, centrosema and lablab: the three to weigh up first

Stylo, or Stylosanthes, is the one most extension officers in the savannah zones bring up first. It is a tough, deep-rooted legume that tolerates poor soil and long dry spells. Its seed is hard-coated and germinates slowly unless you scarify it, which means nicking the seed coat or soaking it in hot water and letting it cool before sowing. Stylo is prone to anthracnose in wet weather, so check the variety with your agric officer and avoid planting it where it has already failed.

Centrosema, or Centrosema pubescens, is a climbing legume that suits the forest and transitional zones better than the dry north. It is slower to establish than stylo, but once it covers the ground it holds moisture and suppresses weeds. It climbs over shrubs and fences, and that is useful on a farm where you want a living boundary and a feed source in the same row.

Lablab, or Lablab purpureus, is a quick annual or short-lived perennial that makes a lot of leafy material in one season. It handles dry weather well and can be grown for grazing, cutting or hay. Its stems become tough as the plant matures, so cut it early for the best feed. Lablab is also a useful break crop, and farmers often grow it between the maize harvest and the next rains.

Ask for seed from a source that can tell you the variety and the germination rate. Seed that has been sitting in a store for years loses vigour, and a patchy first stand costs you a full season.

Gliricidia: the tree that doubles as a fence

Gliricidia, often called the mother of cocoa in parts of the forest belt because farmers planted it to shade young cocoa, is one of the easiest legumes to get going. You do not need to buy much seed. Cut a few straight stakes from a healthy tree during the rains, push them into the ground along a boundary, and most will root and sprout within weeks. The same tree that gives you a fence line gives you leaves for the animals.

Fresh gliricidia leaf is rich in protein, but it contains compounds that can cause problems if an animal is given too much, too fast. The usual advice is to wilt the leaves for a day or so before feeding, which reduces the risk, and to introduce them gradually. Ask your extension officer for the safe share for your class of animal, because the advice differs between goats, sheep and cattle and between a dry-season ration and a wet one.

Keep the trees pollarded or cut back so the regrowth is leafy and within reach. A gliricidia that grows unchecked becomes a tall, woody tree that gives you a lot of stick and very little leaf. Cutting it back every few months keeps the leaf coming and the fence line neat.

Leucaena is another browse tree that farmers in Ghana talk about, and it has its own risk. It contains a compound called mimosine that is toxic in quantity to many animals, and the caution for poultry is covered in our leucaena leaf meal article. For goats and sheep, the advice is to limit the share and to check with a vet or livestock officer before you rely on it.

Cowpea haulm and the crops you already grow

The most useful forage legume on many Ghanaian farms is the one already growing in the field. Cowpea, the black-eyed bean that is picked and eaten across the north and the middle belt, leaves behind a large heap of haulm after the pods come off. Haulm is the stems and leaves, and it is a legume residue with more protein than cereal stover. It is not a complete feed, but it is one of the cheapest sources of roughage and protein you can store for the dry months.

Dry the haulm quickly in the sun, turn it so it does not mould at the base, and store it off the ground under a roof. Haulm that sits in a damp heap goes mouldy within days, and mouldy feed can make animals ill. Groundnut haulm works in much the same way, though its handling is covered in more depth in our groundnut haulm article, which is written for the bird side of the farm.

Mucuna, the velvet bean, is often grown as a cover crop, and some farmers try to feed it to animals. Take care. Mucuna has hairs that irritate the skin and the throat, and its seeds contain compounds that need careful handling and processing before any animal eats them. Treat mucuna as a soil-building cover and leave the seeds out of the feed bin unless an extension officer has shown you how to use them safely.

If you grow cowpea for the pods, sow a little extra so the haulm you get is worth stacking. A small block dedicated to haulm on the farm edge is often more useful than a few bags of residue scattered across three fields.

Land, seed and getting the first season right

Prepare the land as you would for a food crop. Clear the weeds, plough or hoe the ground, and break up any crust so the seed has contact with the soil. Stylo and centrosema are both slow to get going, and the first season is when weeds do the most damage. A stand that is smothered by grass in its first six weeks may never recover, so budget for at least two weeding passes.

Sow at the start of the rains, when the top soil is wet enough to hold the seed and the first flush of weeds has not yet taken over. Broadcast or drill the seed at the rate your extension officer gives you for the species, then lightly cover it. Stylo is often sown by broadcasting into a cleared seedbed, and lablab goes in as a drill crop with a clear row for weeding.

Inoculate the seed if the supplier has it, because legumes perform better when the right rhizobia are present in the root zone. Where the land has grown a legume before, the native bacteria may already be there. Where it has not, an inoculant can speed up nodule formation. Ask your supplier whether the product is suitable for your species and whether it has been stored properly.

Keep the first crop for seed and for stock rather than harvesting it heavily. A young stand that is cut hard in its first season will struggle to set seed, and you will spend the next season buying again.

Intercropping with maize without losing the maize

Many farmers want forage and food from the same field, and intercropping is the usual way to do it. Plant a row of legume between rows of maize, or sow lablab among the stalks once the maize is up. The legume adds leafy feed and covers the soil, and the maize gets the benefit of the nitrogen the legume fixes. The trade-off is competition for light and water, so the spacing has to be planned rather than left to chance.

Moringa is another plant worth putting beside the pen, and our moringa growing guide covers the spacing and pruning that keep it in reach. Keep the legume out of the maize row, and give the maize its full spacing. A row of lablab between two maize rows is often easier to manage than a random scatter that you cannot weed. Harvest the legume before it climbs and shades the maize, and cut it while the cobs are still forming so the maize does not lose light at the critical stage.

Intercropping does not work equally well everywhere. In the north, where rain is limited, the legume and the maize compete hard for the same water in a dry spell. In the forest zone, the crowding can increase disease in wet weather. Try a small plot first, record what you harvest from each crop, and decide whether to expand based on the numbers.

Cutting, drying and making hay in the rains

The best forage is cut at early flowering, when the leaves are still green and the stems are not yet woody. Cut with a sharp cutlass or a sickle, low enough to get the leaf but not so low that you pull soil into the sample. Lay the cut material out in a thin layer on a clean, raised surface, and turn it through the day so it dries evenly.

In the north, the hay can be dry in one or two days in good sun. In the forest zone, the rains come back in the afternoon and the hay gets wet, so cut only when you can see a clear run of dry weather or plan to dry it under a roof. Hay that gets rained on loses leaf, which is the part you wanted. Bring it in before the shower, and spread it again the next morning.

Test the hay before you store it. It should be crisp and leafy, and it should snap rather than bend. If the stems feel damp at the core, or if the leaves smell sour or musty, spread it out again. Stored hay that heats in the middle is a fire risk as well as a feed loss.

Store hay in a dry shed on a raised floor of poles or pallets, away from the walls and the rain line. Stack it so air can move through, and keep the poultry and the rodents out. A stack that is open at one end and closed at the other will rot from the closed end first.

Coarse hay that the animals refuse can go into the compost pit rather than onto the ground. Our composting farm waste article shows how to layer it with dung and peel, and it turns the waste into something useful for the next crop.

Feeding legumes to goats, sheep and cattle

Introduce legume feed slowly over one to two weeks. Start with a small share mixed into the usual browse or grass, and increase it each day as the rumen adjusts. An animal that goes from dry grass to a bucket of fresh legume in one meal is the animal you will find bloated the next morning. This is the single most useful habit you can build around legume feeding.

Feed legume hay and cut-and-carry material in the same way you would feed any roughage, with clean water and a mineral supply nearby. Goats are browsers, and they will pick out the leaves they like and leave the stems, so put the hay in a rack or a trough where they cannot waste it. Sheep and cattle are less selective, and a bale put on the ground will be trampled and dunged on within a day.

Do not feed wet, fresh legume to animals that have been fasted or that are already distended. Do not leave a fresh stand open to grazing when the plants are wet with dew or rain, because the bloat risk is highest then. Keep an eye on animals that stand apart, grind their teeth, or walk with a hunched back after feeding, and call the vet early rather than waiting to see whether it passes.

Pregnant and lactating animals need more protein, so a legume share often helps them most. Young growing animals also benefit. Old, thin animals may need a more careful introduction, because their digestion is less able to handle a sudden change. Follow your vet's and your livestock officer's advice on the stage-by-stage plan for your herd.

A worked example: a dry-season store for twenty goats

Suppose you keep twenty mature goats, each weighing around 25 kilograms, and you want a dry-season store that carries them for 120 days. Goats of that size eat roughly 3 to 4 per cent of their body weight in dry matter each day, so this example uses 0.9 kilograms of dry matter per goat per day. Those are working assumptions. Your own goats, grass and season will shift them, and you should check the numbers with your livestock officer.

Seven hundred and thirty-five kilograms of hay sounds like a lot until you consider that a good cutting from a small block can supply part of it. Work out how many square metres of stand you need for the output you expect, and check that against the area you have. A block that yields less than you planned tells you to either cut more often, or to buy in the balance from a neighbour and say so in your records.

The check is simple. Write down the hay you cut, the hay you stored, the hay you fed and the weight left at the end of the dry season. The difference tells you where the waste is, whether it is rain, rodents, trampling or the goats simply pulling out more than they eat.

Where legumes sit beside your birds

The forage plot is one of the easiest things to share between goats and a flock, provided the rations stay apart. The legume leaves that go to the goats can also be fed to the birds in small amounts once they are dried and chopped, but the bird ration needs its own careful planning. Our feed formulation basics article explains how a bird ration is built, and the cassava in poultry feed article shows another home-grown ingredient in the same frame.

Keep the rations apart. Chicks, growers and layers have different protein and mineral needs from goats, and a legume hay that suits a ewe may be too high in fibre or the wrong balance for a bird. Store the feed for each class of animal in its own bin, label it, and do not let birds and ruminants share a trough.

The forage side of the farm also needs room to grow. Our pasture and grazing management article covers how to rotate animals so the grass and legumes can recover. Our cowpea and bean guide is useful if you want the haulm from a food crop.

When your flock is ready to grow, our day-old chicks range is where the poultry side starts. Order through the order section, or ask our team on WhatsApp at +233 24 915 1503 which birds suit a small mixed farm. Our breeds page sets out the birds we hatch, and the partner with us page is there for farms that plan to grow.

A checklist before you sow a legume block

Use this list before you buy seed or cut your first stake. It covers the steps that most often decide whether a first season works.

1. Confirm which species suits your zone and your soil with the district agric office.
2. Buy seed with a stated variety and germination rate, and keep the label.
3. Scarify hard-coated seed such as stylo before sowing.
4. Clear the field of perennial grass and prepare a firm, weed-free seedbed.
5. Sow at the start of the rains at the rate your extension officer gives you.
6. Plan two weeding passes in the first six weeks.
7. Cut at early flowering, wilt if the species requires it, and dry under cover.
8. Store hay on a raised floor, stacked so air can move through.
9. Introduce every legume feed gradually over one to two weeks.
10. Keep a record of what you cut, store, feed and lose, and review it at the end of the season.

Questions farmers ask