Others can learn from Nyandarua’s successes

KENYA: With approximately 317,000 head of dairy cattle and an annual milk production of 234 million litres valued at Sh7.024 billion, Nyandarua County has dominated conversations on Kenya’s livestock sector.
Few, however, have ever noticed that the current milk productivity and breed yield potential in Kenya needs urgent improvement, in order to give value to livestock farmers across the calendar year, even when rainfall-based feed has declined.

This is the context in which Nyandarua County Government has, in recent days, subsidised its Artificial Insemination (AI) programme to improve genetic potential and the value a farmer receives upon the selling of dairy animals.
We want this programme to benefit both small-scale and medium-scale producers.

Thus, we expect the commercialisation of our dairy sector to lead to a sustained high yield of milk, and capture the available market in various urban areas of Kenya.

A vibrant dairy economy of the kind we have will, no doubt, attract additional modern technologies and enhance the economic well-being of all stakeholders in Nyandarua’s diverse dairy sub-sector.

It is, however, critical to understand how we have come to this position, and possible implications for the wider dairy sector in Kenya.
AI services in Nyandarua have previously been hampered by high cost, poor accessibility and availability of quality services.

On its part, the private sector has been carrying out this service through co-operative societies, supported by individual private providers, but with unsatisfactory performance.

With the vastness of Nyandarua County and lack of a strong local co-operatives movement, it was urgent that the Department of Agriculture, Livestock moots a strategy to address this need.

With this project, therefore, the County Government is enhancing provision of this service through private service providers by providing insemination kits and other equipment, availing liquid nitrogen and semen to points in every sub-county, providing motorcycles to service providers and improving communication between farmers and inseminators through call centers that are manned 24/7.

We are executing this project through signed Memoranda of Understanding (MoU) with duly recruited service providers and the Kenya Animal Genetics Resource Centre (KAGRIC).

Secondly, effective AI services leverage on selected, approved health genetics to bolster production by improving desired traits while minimising undesired ones towards successful conception and subsequent calving, depending on the quality of semen used, timing for insemination and the reproductive health of the animal. Thirdly, we have ensured that these factors are at an optimum in the implementation of this project. The purchase and provision of AI kits to inseminators has ensured the maintenance of semen quality.