Category Archives: Cattle

Animal Health / Biotech / Cattle / Diagnostics / Disease Control / East Africa / ILRI / Kenya / Markets / PA / Pastoralism / Vulnerability

Kenya is working towards disease-free livestock zones to improve its livestock trade

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Herding cattle in Kenya (photo on Flickr by davida3 [Davida De La Harpe]). ‘The [Kenya] government has unveiled a plan to improve trade in livestock by vaccinating 61 million livestock in the next financial year. ‘According to budget estimates released on Thursday, the animals will be vaccinated against foot and mouth disease and other trade-sensitive diseases. … Continue reading »

Cattle / Dairying / East Africa / ILRI / Kenya / MarketOpps / Markets / PA / Rwanda / Uganda

East African Dairy Development project: Kenya cows + chilling plants = milk markets (and profits) for farmers

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A Kenyan dairy farmer feeds her cow (photo on Flickr by eadairy). ‘A chilling tale of cows in Kenya shows how market access is key to impact investing. . . . ‘It started with a mid-term report I was handed called Milking for Profit. The report details a project that works to uplift subsistence dairy … Continue reading »

Animal Production / Cattle / CRP5 / Livestock / Livestock Systems / Nile Basin / Pastoralism / PLE / Uganda

Corralling cattle to improve the productivity of pasture lands affected by termites

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Researchers from the Department of Animal Science in Makerere University were excited, and with good reason, as they surveyed pasture land that had been corralled off in Nakosongala in the cattle corridor of Uganda. The team had been looking at options to improve livestock water productivity (LWP) in the Nile Basin. To their surprise, a … Continue reading »

Animal Products / Cattle / PA

On the artisanal nature of butchery (or more than you ever wanted to know about the natural history of cuts of beef)

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Our online travels today offer us juxtapositions as unexpected (and as oddly fruitful) as any physical safari to the heart of Africa or other continent. Today, for example, we can be reading software-mogul-turned philanthropist Bill Gates on the brave-new-world of laboratory grown meat (‘How food scientists are reinventing meat — and how it can benefit … Continue reading »

Cattle / Climate Change / Drylands / Environment / Food security / Forages / Goats / PA / Pastoralism / Presentation / Sheep / Small Ruminants / Soils / USA / Vulnerability / Wildlife

Want to green the world’s deserts? Do the unthinkable: Put livestock back on them — Allan Savory

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Watch this new provocative 22-minute TedTalk by Allan Savory on ‘How to green the world’s deserts and reverse climate change’. Alan Savory, a Zimbabwean-born biologist/ecologist and rangelands specialist, gives environmentalists pause in a recent TedTalk, published 4 Mar 2013, on the ‘cancer’ of desertification of the world’s drylands, which make up some two-thirds of the … Continue reading »

Africa / Animal Breeding / Animal Production / Biodiversity / Books and chapters / Cattle / Countries / CRP37 / Goats / Guinea / ILRI / Livestock / Mali / Research / Sheep / West Africa

Management of globally significant endemic ruminant livestock in Guinea and Mali

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Although livestock play a central role in rural development in West Africa, traditional livestock systems are in general characterized by high mortality rates, low reproductive rates and low offtake rates. Furthermore, the presence of trypanosome-infected tsetse flies in the subhumid and humid areas seriously holds back the potential for livestock production. The region’s endemic ruminant … Continue reading »

Animal Diseases / Animal Health / Biotech / Cattle / Central Africa / Disease Control / East Africa / ECF / ILRI / Kenya / Launch / PA / Southern Africa / Vaccines

Vaccine developed by KARI, supported by ILRI, is ‘milestone in control of Africa’s livestock diseases’

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Faith Kivuti with her mother milking a cow in Kenya (photo on Flickr by Jeff Haskins). A vaccine to protect cattle against a lethal disease known as East Coast fever has been launched in Kenya, where Kenya Livestock Development Minister Mohammed Kuti says the development ‘is a big relief to livestock farmers in East, Central and … Continue reading »

Agriculture / Animal Production / Cattle / Dairying / Kenya / Knowledge & Information

Livestock and mobile technology: Livestock live talk at ILRI on 11 December 2012

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Su Kahumbu, a Kenyan social entrepreneur (TED Global Fellow 2010) and  2010 winner of Apps4Africa award for the  the iCow application, a cow management platform that helps small-scale farmers manage their dairy cows, will give a presentation on ‘livestock and mobile technology’ at the ILRI Nairobi campus John Vercoe Auditorium, on 11 December 2012, from 1500-1600 hours. View the event announcement: The iCow … Continue reading »

Buffalo / Cattle / Dairying / Directorate / Event report / ILRI / India / PA / South Asia

India’s livestock development trajectory ‘exemplary’–Not only huge in aggregate but also small in scale and sustainable in nature

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 ILRI’s Sapna Jarial translates a speech delivered by a village council president on field visit in Haryana, India, on 4 Nov 2012, made by ILRI management and board (photo credit: ILRI/Nils Teufel). Ilse Köhler-Rollefson, a German livestock researcher and activist ‘for socially responsible and ecologically sustainable livestock development’, asks in a recent blog post, ‘Whose … Continue reading »

Animal Health / Cattle / CRP4 / Dairying / Disease Control / East Africa / Emerging Diseases / Epidemiology / Health (human) / HIV-AIDS / ILRI / Interview / Kenya / MarketOpps / PA / Zoonotic Diseases

‘Crypto’ and other diseases we get from animals are on the rise in poor countries

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Leonard Gitau, a small-scale livestock farmer in Dagoretti, Nairobi, speaks to journalists during a media tour of urban farmers in Nairobi on 21 Sep 2012 (photo credit: ILRI/Paul Karaimu). Sarah Ooko, special correspondent for the East African, reports that ‘animal to human diseases are on the rise’ in this region. ‘Zoonoses’ is the term used … Continue reading »