UPDATE MARCH 21, 2010.

Thank you to those who sent a note. It’s always great to hear from friends when you’re a lonely petunia in an onion patch. I apologise for the tardy update. I was in the East Province (without internet) all last week which is about a 3 ½ hour drive east of Kigali, and known as cattle country. We headquartered in Nagatare, a midsize town that has a small university, a co-op dairy as well as a co-op milk collection centre that is also the central location for the artificial insemination service.

The mountains are not quite as steep as around Kigali with many hillsides made up of a patchwork of paddocks or fields. A significant amount of the Rwandan milk supply comes from this area as well as replacement breeding stock. Although Rwandan people seem to have an affinity for cattle numbers and where production volume is secondary, production is becoming a sought after reward. So it’s not unusual to see a large herd of red Ankoles that might produce only a few litres but more and more herds are becoming crossbred to North American/European dairy breeds as well as purebred Holstein herds.

Production still is quite minimal, purebred Holsteins and crosses achieving 8-15 litres per cow per day are quite common. This being a moderate rainy season, milk prices tend to be low ($0.37 CAD/litre) and farmers suggest that it doesn’t pay to supplement poor pasture feed with maize and Soya meal. They would supplement during the dry season when milk prices increase to 45-50 cents CAD. One of the major challenges here in feeding cattle and even soil is the lack of laboratory testing for soil fertility as well as nutrient levels in the cattle forages and concentrates. Advice can only be given on ‘guesstimations’ even book values are non-existent. We did visit one farmer who was supplementing his pasture with 20kgs of ‘cut & carry’ Napier grass and 4kgs of ground maize. His production was 20-24 litres per cow per day, almost double his pasturing neighbours. He shipped almost as much milk from 10 cows as another farm milking 25 cows. But then he was also the father of 15 children from one wife…so production was certainly in his blood!

Some readers seemed to like the pictures of the last number of Blog posts so I’ll add some more to this one. Hopefully they will be in a more progressive order this time but if not I’ll apologise now for my lack of blogging know-how.