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FA R M S K I L L S A F R I C A
6.
Mastitis and milk hygiene:
there is no
electricity, no refrigeration, no running
water and little education. Milk for sale
must be transported by foot between 1
and 10 km after each milking to the
MCC - all this leads to a high risk of
rapid souring. Keeping bacteria out of
milk when milking by hand into a bucket
on a dusty floor with a dirty tail constantly
swishing and flicking away the flies is no
mean feat - especially if the milker does
not make the connection between dirt,
bacteria, milk keeping abilities and ill
health. In addition, hand milking, poor
hygiene and lack of medicines make
mastitis a real threat. There is no fancy
equipment to measure milk quality - just
CMT for mastitis (cell counts) and an
alcohol test for bacterial contamination:
a very basic agglutination test indicative
of milk pH which is indicative of souring.
7.
The milk collection centre:
as electricity
is scarce, or at best unreliable, the MCC
must have its own generator for the cooler
and tank. It must have its own bore hole
for a water supply, and of course
someone to operate the centre. All this
must be financed (thus reducing the price
paid to the farmer).
8.
Fertility:
artificial insemination (AI) requires
trained technicians, a supply of liquid
nitrogen, a means of transport (bicycle)
and preferably a mobile phone network
(to phone the AI technician). It also
requires good heat detection which is
hard with one cow, harder still if that cow
is thin. Keeping Jersey bulls is dangerous
particularly when housed in pens walled
with flimsy pieces of wire and sticks hand
dug into the ground. Getting the cow
to the bull is also a challenge. The
Mozambique project is using a
combination of bulls and AI.
9.
Water:
in the Mozambiquan heat, each
400kg Jersey cow drinks 80-100L water.
This is carried to the cow daily, in 20L
drums, usually on someone's head from a
distance of 1-3km. Some farmers or
communities have closer access to
streams. Larger farms (5 cows or more)
will pipe water from a nearby well
or stream.
10.
Veterinary Care:
there isn't any!
Medicines are minimal; the only antibiotic
widely available is oxytetracycline
injection. With time, as a dairy industry
develops, veterinary pharmacists will have
an incentive to source dairy medicines
and entrepreneurial Community Livestock
Workers may develop rudimentary
veterinary services.
So none of this is easy and it is remarkable
what progress the LOL team has achieved
in 18 months. So far there are 165 Jersey
cows being milked by approximately 120
farmers. Most farmers have 1 cow but one
entrepreneur is already up to 14 cows; he
buys and processes milk from other farmers
too, selling yoghurt in plastic pouches through
street vendors. Two other more commercially
minded farmers have diversified into dairying
and have around 20 cows each. They supply
the one large commercial farm in the area;
150 cows owned by an exiled white
Zimbabwean couple. This farm is the main
milk buyer and processor, making cheese
and selling pasteurised whole milk. To get
just this far has cost the project $3 million;
a lot of money in any language but especially
in Mozambique.
My involvement:
I met up with fellow UK vet, Peter Edmondson,
in Zimbabwe and crossed the border to
Mozambique. Over the next 2 weeks, we
trained 298 farmers/potential farmers and
24 CLW's and LOL field staff. Training was a
huge amount of fun. Given that none of the
local population speaks any English and Peter
and I are hardly fluent in the local language,
Shona, reliance on the spoken word would
not work. Although 3 way translation (English
=> Portuguese => Shona) was used, and if
we were lucky, direct translation to Shona,
we relied more and more on acting and role
playing. Lionel Blair and Una Stubbs would
have been proud of us.
Our games became increasingly imaginative
with women pretending to be cows in heat
whilst a farmer had to spot them and an AI
technician had to get them pregnant! There
was a lot of giggling; Peter even had a group
burst into spontaneous song. Hopefully we
weren't just seen as two strange white people
waving our arms around in front of a crowd of
bemused locals. In fact at the end of each
day's training, farmers would proudly re-tell the
new things that they had learnt. Our training
was hugely helped by some great lesson plans
devised by previous XLVets volunteers.
Was it worth it?
In the weeks before my departure, I was
frequently asked 'Why on earth are you going
to Mozambique
?
' I must admit that I was
beginning to wonder myself. Giving up two
weeks' holiday and paying for expensive
flights, let alone leaving my family, especially
my very beautiful and long suffering wife
Laura, behind to venture into the unknown,
could be seen as a rash decision. However,
being something of a travel addict, I was
quietly confident it would pay off. I was
not disappointed.
The project is undoubtedly doing a lot of
good and the benefits should be lasting and
sustainable. This is all about wealth creation
and giving people a leg up, definitely not a
hand out. We spoke to farmers, who said
their lives had changed, for example by being
able to send one or two of their children to
school and to feed the whole family better.
All this whilst providing better nutrition for their
neighbours. There is definitely a feel good
factor being involved in something like this,
despite our realistic appreciation of the tiny
part we have played.
As mentioned, I am a bit of a travel addict
and this is not because I like queueing at
airports or being cooped up overnight on a
plane, but because like many people, I am
interested in the wider world. I feel amazingly
fortunate that my career gives me unparalleled
opportunities to see and experience different
cultures first hand. It is infinitely more
rewarding than watching a documentary
or reading the papers. This was my first foray
into sub-Saharan Africa and there is plenty
to learn and experience. Feeding the world
and the role of dairying is something that
most vets and dairy farmers will have an
interest in; I feel I can now place a few
more pieces of the puzzle.
Additionally, from a very practical point of
view, the opportunity to use novel training
techniques has been a great experience. I
enjoy training in any case and I am interested
in learning better communication skills to
produce change. Watch out for more
singing and dancing in future trainings!
Finally, two weeks with no phone or email
contact, immersed in a culture where time
has little meaning, no rush, no panic, minimal
stress: that's surely worth having in anyone's
book. Mozambique was, for me, full of smiles
and laughter; quite a tonic really from the
demands of my usual life.
WORKING
TOGETHER
FOR A HEALTHIER FUTURE...
17
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