A warm welcome to our first neighbours... I am sure we will soon build an excellent team which will lead to great achievements.

Please fell free to post here any idea, question or suggestion you might have about Walungu and the project.

We are looking forward to your contributions

Sonja

Hello everyone,

Look forward to seeing this project moving in a good direction.

Best regards,

Raul

Hi Sonja,

Thanks for the information.

Apart from the things that recommended Pravem, which are very good suggestions, I would add a few more from our experience in Menengai:

- Do not buy male cows. Stay with females and Artificially Inseminate or hire a bull when you need to.

- Do not take the cows to pasture, bring the food to them using fast growing grass (nappier grass) you can also store it and even sell it as a businnes

- Maybe divide the works in teams if they want to be more effective. FOr example a team to cultivate and store nappier grass, another for milking, maybe include in the plan people that will learn some more skills and then transfer it to the rest. Rotate people and then share practices. They will learn quicker that way.

- HAve good hygienic practices when milking. And yes, as Pravem recommends, keep tehm separate and do not take them to pasture

- FOr the grass you can actually cultivate it between other crops

- Diversify. Do not depend on on single product. (maybe contact Ken from minifarms, if he still has seeds he will send you some for sure)

- Try to identify products you can manufacture with other products, add value

- Try to follow a good breeding plan, after a few generations you will have great cows

- And make sure there is a team effort. The more people you get together and the more they save the more cows they will buy in the shorter time nad the mroe they will reproduce and the more people will have more cows.

- The work of the community together is much stronger than teh work of people alone.

Hope this helps and happy to answer any questions.

Form here I think the plan could be around selecting crops, organising teams, identifying resources and products that work well in the area, market analysis and things like that.

Look forward to hearing more from you all.

Raul

Dear Raul,

Thank you very much for offering us your support, your help is much appreciated. Many thanks for all those advices. Menengai village has been very successful and we are privileged that we can learn from its experience.

Besides, the village Khunti in India you mentioned shared their own experience with us and here are the lessons that have been learned:

"- Praveen, Local Representaive of Khunti, advises any new Nabuur project to FIRST have a good organised and trained group of people and healthy care and environment for the cows.
- They have now decided that the cows will not stay in the shed where they where not very well taken care of. They will be straining with the families at their homes, where better care is guaranteed.
- make sure that there is access to experts and veterinary support (low cost)
- It is very hard to raise the money for the building of the shed, so in fact it has been a waste to build (half of) while they have now decided to keep the cows at the individual farms...
- The organisation and training of the care takers of the cows needs more attention. People are not sufficiently motivated and active to run the project and take care.
- Some cows have died due to insufficient care. For this reason they will not get new cows before the awareness, training and social organisation is better.
- The lesson learned is that investments of capital in building infrastructure should only be done in a later phase of the project, when the need for and success of a common cow shed and building for has been proved and justified...."

These are the frst contributions to our project and they will be of a great value for our further progress.

Warmly,
Sonja

I indeed think there is a lot of information available so I think Walungu should learn a lot from what the other villages have been doing.

Look forward to seeing how things start happening in the village.

Raul

Hi all of you,
I am very highlighted by the Raoul and PRaven advices.I learn from them such more interesting things that I didn't think before.
I agree with Raoul and I notice that he prefers fast growing grass as good than pasture.As usual in our habit,walungu people used to pasture.This is a good opportuinity to be traine how to store grass.we have 9 run month per year and during the 3months dry season people used to displace to a wait fare place.This way will limite this movement.Effectively when people come back to the village with cow after the dry seoson the get malaria and some cow dead.

It sounds very important to cultivate grass from seeds as recommande Raoul and to split in two groupe beneficiaries.
The grass production coul constitute an other way of income generating.I wel come this kind of iniative if seed are accessible.
Anyway the local capacity building in grass cultivating,storing and selling is a new Idea and we can take it as part of the project.Sonja and all neighbours I learn more from this discussion,let others join this.
Surely there is a lot of information available and Walungu will learn a lot from what the other villages have been doing adapting his environement.

I thank you for the contribution.

More than welcome Guillaume.

Let's keep all working together to define exactly how these things can start happening in the village.

Some questions:

How many people are interested in being part of the project.

How much money can they save per week/month. Have you quoted the cost of a cow in the area? What kinds of cows can you find? VEterinary and Artificial insemination services in the area?

All these questions will also be key for teh development of the plan.

If you have technical questions and prefer to post them in French I am happy to also translate, post and reply of I am able to.

Look forward to continue helping you with the knowledge that can help you run a very successful project. It is great that you could get empowered with our support.

A bientot,

Raul

I'm happy to see what contribution Raul has already made with his knowledge and experience :-)

I have also been reading about Menengai and learning about dairy, farming, zero grazing... :-D Hope some more people will join us soon.

I'm also looking forward to Guillaume's answers. What I already know is that they have a vet who could also train others if needed. In the section "Define what is available in Walungu for the project" you can see what they already have

http://www.nabuur.com/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=6869&forum=47...

Regards to everyone.
Lets keep moving forward :hammer:

FORm what I read in the things that are available I would keep on advising to start looking into saving groups even if a proposal is to be preapared.

Also, it s not a good idea to cultivate vegetables to feed the animals.. Cultivate vegetables that can be used to feed the humans and with sub-products not edible for humans but that animals love. For example corn leaves that can be mixed with nappier grass. Cows really like the mix and it boosts the milk production combined with the fact that the food will come to the cows and not the opposite.

Let's try to find ways to structure more the discussions so we can start defining ways to start having concrete actions.

Look forward to hearing form you all.

Raul

Raul thanks once more for all good suggestions. I sent an email to Ken to see how we could get the seeds, hope he'll answer soon. The seeds you got in Menengai should fit Walungu too I guess, since the climate in Congo is probably more or less the same as in Kenya? Does anyone know about any differences in vegetation between these two countries?

As for our discussion, any idea on the structure? All suggestions are very welcome.

Hi Sonja,

I would suggest beginning to put together the info and then making a plan from general to particular, from easier to harder and from requiring less external resources to more external resources.

Raul

Dear Friends,

I am very much interested in helping the community - I worked actually in the field and seen the problems and possible solutions could be adopted by the community.

The most important point for everyone to know is the project - It is a project depending on local Participating community members and their hard work with interest, knowledge and experience in Dairy.

When the project is completely new and this is the idea only without much of experience in dairy and if funding is not accessible to the members for buying cows then to make the project successful everyone should think on the following points -

First of all we need to understand the participating members

MUST - The participating group has any knowledge about dairy
At any point of life they were into this business

If we try to impose the Dairy activity to members never had any exposure/ experience or have never seen this activity - it is better not to take up this project

Should adopt Co-operative system i.e buying and selling in the group (bulk purchase and sale).

Also in one of the posts I read that the cows would not be kept at the common place - If this is so then it is highly important that the participating com. members have experience in dairy or handling cows etc. Also one has to think about training how will it be feasible to visit 20 individual families in training if the group is inexperienced. What kind of training is LR thinking to individuals.

I would suggest the LR to kindly update on the participating members before working out on finding examples of Revolving Livestock Fund projects/programs and can think of five or ten cows in the beginning instead twenty.

I didn't find the details about the participating members - their background etc. which is very much important for this project.

I think funding will not be a problem - But if we miss anything of the above it is better to seriously think for any other livelihood option than Dairy.

Let me know if you need any more information

with many best wishes,

Praveen Ohal

Dear Praveen,

Welcome to Walungu and thank you very much for offering us your help. Your post is an interesting one – all very good points, and we have to seriously think about them.

Frankly, I don't have detailed information about whether the community has any experience in dairy or not. (Nor do I know exactly what kind of vegetables they grow, Raul. I first undestood they grow fodder, but it could well be that the vegetables are only for their food... :-? ) We'll have to ask Guillaume about all that, as well as about the detailes about the community members. I'm sure he will be glad to answer us asap. But he's usually offline in weekends and we have to be patient.

As for their experience in dairy - since they are pastoralists traditionally, somehow I believe that it shouldn't be a problem to train them even if they never did that before? They must at least have seen their parents and grandparents doing that... I have no idea how difficult it could be...Maybe we should consult an expert in that field? What do the others think? :-? :-?
Besides, one of the missions of their NGO – ASDI is to train the people in cow breeding... They will probably help with that too. We'll see what Guillaume will say. I think that the more important question is how much they are interested and motivated for doing it.

Praveen, maybe you're right that the pilot project should aim 5-10 cows instead of 20. What do the others think?

I also agree that the funding won't be a problem if we prove that the aim of the project is reasonable and that the project is feasible. I agree with Raul that it would be much better (though harder) for the community to ensure at least a part of the money by themselves. But the question is how possible it would be for the community to save anything if they only strive to survive?
(Raul, I think in your village the community had already worked with cows and had a possiblilty to save some money, while in Walungu the situation is different.) Anyway, we need an input from Guillaume for this question as well.

Looking fwd to hear everyone's comments
Take care

The last few postings have offer very important thoughts and ideas. Heifer International has decades of experience in this type thing. Study their model. A family gets a cow and the first female is donated to go to another family. Pastoralists know cattle; only the dairy part will be new. Milk every morning and night, 365 days a year.

Another way the village can get into the dairy business is to bred some females to a dairy breed bull and continue using a dairy breed bull with those offspring. In other words, grow into the dairy business. To me this is the way to do it. They do it themselves. One thing they must realize is that to get a lot of milk out the rear of a cow, them must put a lot of good feed into the front of the cow. Poor feed in; little milk out. High quality feed in; high milk yield out. I am willing to help with gardening.

Outside funding, unless very carefully done, breeds dependency.

Dear Ken,

Thank you very much for offering your support to our project and for this valuable input.

I am convinced that, with the joint effort of all our wonderful neighbours, we are going to deliver great results.
Hope that some more neighbours will join us soon.

Looking forward to read from you all.
Sonja