Livestock production is one of the valued economic activities among the residents of Nkoilale, Maasai Mara, Narok County. By Nelson Kirrokor.
Pastoralist and livestock go together. That is why residents of Nkoilale value their livestock so much despite the increasing challenges of water, limited grazing spaces and diseases.
With increased pressure on land and changing climatic conditions, residents are getting it hard to manage this economic activity. To address these challenges, in 2018, NCDF sought support from Kenya Community Development Foundation (KCDF) to revive the underperforming livestock production in the area.
One of the major challenges was to address – diseases that were increasingly affecting the livestock. Consequently, in 2020, we established a livestock spray bay to cater for more than 10,000 livestock owned by farmers around Nkoilale. Our objective was to provide subsidized livestock spraying services to control common pesticide diseases in the area. Other services included vaccination and pasture production to boost livestock husbandry.
"Since this project began, we have witnessed the minimum occurrence of foot and mouth diseases which had a devastating impact on our livestock. We have enough stock of pasture in our stores." -John Kiok Livestock farmer.
Enhancing access to markets
Through the established livestock cooperative, farmers are now able to access markets for their livestock. In 2021, the cooperative secured a contract with a livestock company in Nairobi. However, this contract was stopped due to delayed payments to farmers. Currently, is looking for long-term contracts to sell its livestock to high-end markets.
