One man’s Boer goat dream

In Kabukye village, Kamuli district in eastern Uganda, Dr Gideon Nadiope 42, is pioneering a groundbreaking technology that has the potential to transform goat production in sub-Saharan Africa. After many years of experimenting, the vet has perfected Artificial Insemination (AI) in goats, a technology that until now was thought to be only applicable to the breeding of cattle.

Today, for just Shs 3000 ($1.2) small holder farmers in Kamuli can get access to improved goat breeds through Artificial Insemination. That compares with the $150 it would typically cost to buy an in-kid Boer imported from South Africa.

Nadiope’s work is so significant to animal production that it is one of the technologies that have been adopted for dissemination by the Community Animal Health Network (CAHNET), a regional forum that brings together organisations and individuals with an interest in community animal health initiatives in Eastern Africa.

The beginning
The journey to AI in goats dates back to the late1990s soon after Nadiope had graduated as a Veterinary Assistant. He and a couple of friends looked at ways of putting their skills to productive use and decided on offering Artificial Insemination for cattle to farmers in Busoga.

“We looked for areas that were lacking service and identified AI in cattle as one such area,” he recalls. The business worked on the simple principle that helping the farmers get better quality animals that would earn them higher incomes would make them willing to come back and pay for the service. That way, the AI centres would also build a relationship with the farmers.

In the space of just three years, Nadiope’s centres had reached 15,000 farmers. His team of twelve was on average carrying out 44 inseminations per month. In due course, it emerged that many more farmers would be interested in AI but they were constrained by lack of sufficient supply of liquid nitrogen.

However, a number of farmers did not have sufficient land to raise cattle but had interest in improving their goats. “Many farmers asked if we could apply AI in goats but at the time, the technology did not exist, so we looked at bucks/male goats,” Nadiope explains.

Through Busoga Diocese with the help and support of the retired Bishop Cyprian Bamwoze, four bucks were secured from Kenya. The stock of four was dispersed in Busota, Budondo, Iganga CMS and Buyuge, locations separated by more than 60 kilometres to act as breeding stock.

The bucks were dispersed across a wide area at first because he wanted to see how they performed under different conditions. That reduced chances of in-breeding. Farmers were trained in general handling and management of the improved goats with an emphasis on benefits such as increased meat production, higher growth rate of the crossbred and increased milk yields as well as the application of droppings as manure to improve crop production.

Afterwards, when farmers brought goats over for cross-breeding, they saw better goats that grew faster, setting the stage for acceptance of AI. The bucks were rotated to avoid in-breeding but this proved to be a limiting factor since they could not be rotated more than three times.

The break for Nadiope came much later in 2005 when Dr Lorna Brown, an animal breeder in the UK who was already applying AI to sheep, wrote enquiring about possible collaboration. Nadiope saw an opportunity to transfer her expertise in sheep to goats, so he arranged for her to come over to Kabukye.

He bought 40 indigenous goats and imported 300 doses of goat semen from South Africa. Though the success rate from the subsequent insemination was low, Nadiope had learnt his lessons. Goats are more sensitive to stress and it is essential to calm them down before embarking on the exercise.

He also realised that he needed more knowledge and he had taken on too much at the first attempt. During that pioneer attempt, Nadiope carried out Cervical AI, Laparoscopic AI and Embryo transfer all in one day.
For all the trouble, only one goat out of the 21 that were inseminated conceived. The single case of success came from the group of goats that had been subjected to Laparoscopic AI while the Cervical AI and embryo transfer groups yielded nothing.

“A common mistake people make in goat AI is to follow the regime of cattle, yet the two do not work the same way,” he observes. In this case, AI started 36 hours after the heat-inducing hormones were withdrawn and the goats were transported immediately after the exercise, subjecting them to high levels of stress.

After that, Nadiope spent two months with a South African goat breeder where he learnt so much about goat breeding. On return to Uganda, he invited farmers to bring goats that were on heat on which he performed Cervical AI, achieving a 42% conception rate. Although this was lower than the average 54-85% success rate, it proved that AI in goats was possible in Uganda.