One man’s Boer goat dream

Later, he came into contact with Dr Pradip Ghalsasi, an Indian breeder who had been practicing AI in goats with much success in India. It was from Pradip that he learnt that stress was a major inhibitor to successful AI in goats and that checking the mucus membrane of goats prior to AI allowed one to gauge the chances of success. On his third attempt, Nadiope inseminated 67 indigenous breed goats, achieving a 78% conception rate on farm.

Further, for his Master of Science in Livestock Development, Planning and Management degree thesis in which he investigated the conception rates of estrus-synchronised indigenous Ugandan goats by cervical artificial insemination, he inseminated 149 community goats, of which 61.7% conceived.

Farmers are excited about cross-bred goats because the offspring grow faster. Often in just five months, the kid is bigger than the indigenous mother and the farmers have either been swapping a given number for cows or selling them at prices as high as $50 for a kid.

Nadiope has decided to scale up breeding of dairy goats because a major challenge he discovered early on was that Boers are heavy feeders, yet the indigenous goats produce very small amounts of milk. If nutrition is good, a goat can drop as many as three kids. This would be a challenge to farmers who would need to buy milk to supplement the mother supply. Having dairy cross- bred goats as mother stock would therefore lead to improved survival rates for the kids, he says.

Goats are an important source of income and animal protein for many poor communities in Africa but their production has been constrained by the absence of improved breeds and lack of adequate animal husbandry by farmers. Compared to local breeds, improved goats are ready for the market in just five months, meaning farmers have an opportunity to earn more from goat rearing.

Different people ranging from farmers seeking AI services to students and peers from institutions of higher learning, visit his farm in Kabukye to learn from him. Nadiope says his technology has the potential to improve the quality of goat herds in Uganda faster and at lower cost. While the government has for years tried to improve goat breeds in Uganda through importation of Boer goats, the supply of Boer males has not adequately reached the poor communities to enable them to improve the quality of their herds.

Besides a less-than-adequate frequency of imports, the limited stocks of male goats and the movement of these stocks or their offspring may lead to adverse effects of inbreeding. On the other hand, using imported bucks is not a sustainable solution as importation of live goats is expensive; some of them die off before they are effectively used leaving farmers without quality bucks to breed with. When semen is collected from the bucks, it can be kept and used for AI long after the death of the buck.

Comparatively, Nadiope charges farmers just Shs3000($1.2) to inseminate a local goat under natural heat and Shs10,000 ($4.1) when heat is induced using hormones. Nadiope has now learnt to harvest and extend semen locally. Resources allowing, he plans to begin freezing semen, which would expand his capacity to offer AI services.

He believes CAHNET is a useful platform for sharing knowledge and succeeding together. “They link you vet-to-vet and vet-to-farmer so it is a great platform for knowledge sharing,” he says.