Assessment and economic evaluation of sheep reproduction efficiency, challenges and mitigation strategies in Kajiado, Kenya.

Effective reproduction of sheep and goats allow pastoralists to produce animals for food production, but also to ensure that they have new young animals each year to replace their old reproductive livestock (mothers). However, different diseases, climate change factors (such as drought) and other challenges can interfere with the capacity of sheep and goats to get pregnant or to deliver a healthy new-born animal. Such negative impacts can have important consequences to pastoralists, who may not have enough offspring to sell and therefore will not generate enough income to sustain their family or livelihood. In extreme cases, they will not be able to replace their reproductive females livestock (mothers), meaning that the size of their herd will decrease, diminishing pastoralists capacity to recover in the future and to survive. For this reason, it is essential to identify those factors that may have a negative or positive impact on reproduction of these animals and to estimate how much of an impact these may have. This can be done with indicators of reproduction performance (e.g. percentage of lambs born death or percentage of ewes lambing per year in a herd) that could provide information to measure changes in reproduction capacity. However, information on these indicators is not available for sheep and goat pastoralists in Kenya, representing a barrier to monitor their situation and to identify problems or successes.
The study proposed here aims at generating the basic knowledge on the current level of the reproduction performance indicators for different sheep and goat herds, which could then be used as a reference to identify those pastoralists more at risk of losing their animals and those better performing. This will be done through scanning of the available literature, interview with key experts and interviews with pastoralists. We will test if climate change factors (such as large mobility of animals, poor access to water or fresh pastures or conflicts), socio-economic factors (such as gender of the pastoralist or number of dependents), type of advice channels to pastoralists, presence of infections or existing innovations have the capacity to influence the level of these reproduction indicators. We will also use this knowledge to conduct economic analysis to estimate the financial losses or gains due to changes in the capacity of reproduction of sheep or goats. In addition, we will test for six major diseases that affect sheep and goats' reproduction capacity, but that can also infect and cause illnesses in humans.
The results of the study will therefore generate a baseline knowledge to indicate possible areas of interventions or research that could help pastoralists to improve the reproduction capacity of their sheep or goats. The project will represent a multi-disciplinary collaboration between researchers and students of the University of Nairobi, Kenya, and the Royal Veterinary College in the United Kingdom.

The outcomes will be of considerable value to a variety of potential beneficiaries, such as pastoralists, veterinarians, regional and central policy makers, academia and other research institutions, and the wider public.

The main beneficiaries of this project will be the pastoralists and veterinarians or animal health practitioners. The project will provide information on reproductive performance that they can use to set up targets, monitor the health of their flocks, detect potential reproductive problems and determine the effectiveness of changes in their reproduction management. Furthermore, the project will provide information on the factors associated to poor or efficient reproduction performance and the economic impact of these. This information would be useful to inform decision-making process to improve reproduction of their small ruminants.

The wider public, but especially those in contact with small ruminants, will also benefit in different ways. In first instance, the project will determine livestock infection to pathogens that not only causes reproduction losses in sheep and goats, but that also represent a public health risk. This is because the pathogen investigated can infect humans, through direct contact or contaminated products or environments, and cause severe illness. The results will therefore allow generating awareness on the importance of these pathogens in the livestock population in Kajiado. This knowledge will also be useful for policy makers for the development of disease control programs to minimize public health risks. Secondly, understanding and quantifying the impact of small ruminant reproduction challenges will contribute towards generating more resilient and efficient producers. This will protect the livelihood and food security of pastoralists and their close communities, but will also help to improve food supply to the general population.

The research communities and implementers agencies: The results will provide benchmarking data that could be used as reference to monitor the effectiveness of policies and interventions conducted in the area. It will allow identifying those type of pastoralists at risk of losing their herds and those more efficient pastoralists. The results will therefore help to better select targets of interventions (so to target those populations more at risks), identify areas or innovations implemented that could be the focus of more detailed research studies and inform policies to increase preparedness to future system shocks affecting small ruminant reproduction.Furthermore, understanding of pastoralists' information networks for reproduction management will also allow to promote effective educational strategies and communications strategies of the relevant policies and intervention programs.