Abstract: East Coast Fever (Theileriosis) is a tick-borne disease that causes significant dairy herd capital assets loss to smallholder dairy farmers particularly in areas outside Compulsory Cattle Cleansing demarcated areas. Record of exotic dairy cattle mortality in in Kisumu County livestock production office indicated that smallholder dairy farmers lost up to 70% exotic dairy cattle to East Coast Fever (ECF) during the implementation of Livestock Development Program (LDP). This was confirmed by this study conducted among 168 smallholder dairy farmers keeping 1-5 dairy cattle on 1-4 acres land in this areas in Kisumu County which is outside compulsory cattle cleansing area. The collected data was analyzed using descriptive Statistics, Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) and Pearson Chi-square (χ2) applied on recorded ECF cases, the outcome of mitigation processes applied against ECF, effects of ECF on farmers’ Dairy Herds capital assets using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS). The study indicated that dairy farmers incurred losses in both exotic dairy herds’ capital to ECF and some of the ECF endemic stable indigenous breeds to Tick Borne Diseases (TBDs) due to poor application of disease mitigation measures. During the analysis of this study, two factors significantly contributed to the dairy farmer losses: Late introduction of dairy farming to smallholder farmers in this study area outside formerly compulsory tick control; dairy farmers in this study area did not get early exposure of dairy farming like the dairy farming communities in area the white settlers introduced dairy farming as early as 1954. The other factor was breakdown of community dips following enactment of Livestock Structural Adjustment Program (SAP’s) that exclusively transferred ticks control responsibility from the government provided services by veterinary department to dairy farmers in all part of Kenya
Keywords: East Coast Fever, Smallholder Dairy Farmers, Cattle Cleansing Policy, exotic breed, endemic stable indigenous breed, Tick Borne Diseases, dairy herd capital assets, exotic and crossbred dairy breed.
Title: East Coast Fever Effect on Smallholder Dairy Farmers’ Dairy Herds’ Capital Assets in Kisumu East Sub-county, Kenya
Author: Kakuku M.. C., Munyua, C. N. Kinuthia L. N.
International Journal of Social Science and Humanities Research
ISSN 2348-3156 (Print), ISSN 2348-3164 (online)
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