CHAPTER ONE
1.0 INTRODUCTION
There has been a trend of growing numbers of camels in the world between 2001 and 2011(FAO, 2013). This increase might be attributed to changing of environment form the savannah to arid and semi-arid condition, development in camel farming, and an improved ecological image of camel farming and products. The total camelids population in the world in 2013 was estimated at around 25 million animals. This number is probably underestimated because camels are migrant animals. It is difficult to conduct a census for camels such as the wild Australian camel population. The general estimate of the camel world population may probably be around 30 million head (Faye, 2013). About 88% of the
camels are found in Africa, while Asia has 12%. The main concentration of dromedary camels in Africa is in the East African countries with 80% of the total camel population raised under various production systems.
The most important countries with a camel population of more than 1 million are Somalia, Sudan, Ethiopia, Niger, Mauritania, Chad, and Kenya. A significant proportion (71% of total world camels) of the world camel population is found in countries defined by FAO as Net Food Importing Developing Countries, Low Income Food Deficit Countries hold 68% of total world camels and Least Developed Countries had 59% of total world camels (Kadim et. al., 2014). Nigeria in particular has about 28,000 camels (NASS, 2011) which are concentrated in the Sahelian region of the North western part of Nigeria (FDCPLS, 1992). The dromedary camels adopted themselves to the ecosystem of dry and hot zone where they
are subjected to hash condition in addition to severe fluctuation in the nutritional status, which in turn affect their general performance (Wardeh, 2004).
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