Application of GPS and GIS in dairy livestock management:

Abstract

Dairy farming plays an important part in Kenya’s economy. Any activities contributing to itsimprovement can only improve the livelihoods of its dependents. Proper record keeping isa prerequisite for improvement in management, breeding and ultimately in productivity ofthe sector. Currently there is poor participation in dairy recording with only less than 1% of the eligibledairy herd being milk recorded at the national level. This project documents a GIS based analytical tool to aid in decision making as pertains tolocating the current participants in dairy registration and recording as well as offering toolsto aid in service delivery. The study was limited to farmers who had registered their animals by January 2007. The project involved identifying stakeholders in dairy recording, carrying out a user needsassessment, data collection on herds, owners, and animals, geodatabase developmentand eventually a testing of the geodatabase to see its functionality. It was found that stakeholders have spatial information needs. The geodatabasedeveloped was found to be functional and fulfilled user needs. Farms with registered herdswere found to be clustered around the divisional headquarters while most of the registeredherds were found to be in Agro ecological zones UM2 and LHI. There was found to be poorfollow up by farmers after initial registration of their animals. It is recommended that farmers who have shown an interest in dairy recording be followedup so that uptake of recording is improved, main coordinators in the livestock recordingadopt georeferencing by use of hand held GPS receivers, further improvement of thedeveloped geodatabase to be more user friendly, and more facilitation in extension so thatmore farmers are reached