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Keeping the Cows Alive

The long dry season is always hard but some years are harder than others

By Remember the Goat

August 7^th, 2021

August - Isiolo County

It is not a drought, but it looks like a drought. The land is bare earth, in most places there is nothing left on it for livestock (or wildlife) to eat. In cracks and gaps between stones and tree roots some spikes of dry stalks remain, but not much else. Animals that browse, that eat leaves on bushes, like goats, camels, gerinuk or eland, they still have something to eat. Sheep, cows and zebra, animals that graze, they are having a much harder time.

Traditionally our cows, like those of all our neighbours, would move with the season to find pasture. This is getting harder and harder to do. The sheer number of livestock now across the arid north makes it increasingly difficult to find any place that isn't over grazed. Already herders from further east, whose last two rainy seasons were even worse than ours, have moved across and into any corners of grazing left. Now the only real option available is private land or the forests high on the slopes of Mount Kenya.

So we are keeping our cows at home and hoping to be able to get enough fodder to keep them going through to Novemeber, when, we all hope, the rains will come again. We feed mostly a rough dry grass that can be bought locally from private ranches. Mixing it with some molasses as it's nutrient value it pretty low. We also give them salt and some cattle pellets if we can get them. This is not a profitable way to keep livestock here, their worth is not so great to financially justify months of buying fodder. But then keeping cattle here is most definitely a labour of love rather than a proposition for profit.