The Department of Animal Science has a mandate to maintain the university vision of “Service and Excellence” in teaching, research and public service. The Department has a full compliment of expert academic and technical staff highly experienced in animal production, nutrition, reproduction and breeding. The department has laboratory facilities with state of the art equipment for feed analyses and gives advisory information, offers quality control and support services to the livestock industry. There is also a Field Station facility for animal research, teaching, training and production.

Teaching
The department provides teaching in Livestock Production, Aquaculture, Range Management and Game Ranching at undergraduate level. Graduate training for Masters and Doctor of Philosophy are available in Animal Science and Animal Nutrition and Animal Breeding. The Department also provides short fit for purpose courses to individuals, groups, public and private organizations on demand and in structured learning systems.

Consultancy
Consultancy services are in animal feed formulations and feed analysis, and expert advice on animal management to individuals, public service and private sector, and impact assessment of livestock production on the environment.

Service Provision
The members of staff in the department are involved in the provision of information on various aspects of livestock management and also participate in national planning. The Department has laboratory and field station facilities through which it provides services for the livestock industry. The laboratory does feed analyses and gives advisory information, quality control and support services to the livestock industry, staff and student research. The field station is used as a live animal laboratory for demonstrating to students and doing research, as well as demonstrating feed preparation and formulation.  

Collaboration
Some of the institutions and organizations the department collaborates with include livestock feed manufacturing companies, Non Governmental Organizations (NGOs), Technical committees, Government ministries, Public and Private Institutes, International Organizations, Communities, Individual patrons and Cooperating Universities.

Research Areas
The members of academic staff are actively involved in both basic and applied research of national importance and academic growth. Some of the research is the following areas:  evaluation of the productive and reproductive characteristics of the local (village) chickens;  industrial and commercialization of cassava as a food/feed crop; application of isotopic and related techniques to optimize the use of indigenous resources in livestock production systems; evaluation of performance and factors associated with low productivity in local-exotic crossbred cattle; characterization and determination of nutrient composition of edible plants of Zambia, cassava cyanogenesis and implication on intellectual development of children in cassava consuming population;, assessment of the feeding value of cassava meal as an energy ingredient in broiler and quail rations; assessment of Ricinodendron rautanenii Schinz nut meal as a source of protein in broiler rations; Assessing the effect of Groundwater on  livestock performance and on their health.