Nakuru County targets to vaccinate at least 50,000 cattle against foot and mouth disease in a free vaccination exercise following an outbreak of the disease in some parts of Rongai Sub-County.
County Executive Committee Member (CECM) for Agriculture, Livestock, Fisheries, and Cooperatives Leonard Bor said the vaccination drive was already underway at Koisamo and Losibil dips within Soin Ward in Rongai.
The CECM said the county was also vaccinating other animals, with over 2000 pets (dogs and cats) having been vaccinated in Rongai to prevent the spread of other diseases and help reduce livestock mortality.
Following the outbreak, Mr. Bor has called on livestock farmers to ensure they avail all their animals for the free vaccination, saying this will help stop exposing their respective regions to possible livestock disease outbreaks.
The CECM explained that lumpy skin disease was a viral disease of cattle that is spread by biting insects. The virus, he added, was closely related to the pox viruses of sheep and goats and causes nodular skin lesions on the animal’s body, hence the need for urgent action to ensure all the animals are vaccinated.
The County official explained that the viral disease, which was very contagious, caused mouth ulcers and foot lesions in cattle, goats, and sheep and had killed dozens of animals in the region.
While saying that the majority of farmers within the devolved unit were to blame for the disease outbreaks as they had neglected vaccinating and deworming their livestock, Mr. Bor appealed to the farmers to take the vaccination exercise seriously to help stop the spread of the viral diseases.
He said the most effective way of containing foot and mouth disease during outbreaks was to restrict the movement of animals to prevent the safe animals from having contact with infected ones.
According to reports from the county government, livestock farming earns Nakuru farmers millions of shillings annually through the sale of milk and meat products.
The reports also indicate that at least 70 per cent of the total acreage of land in Nakuru is agriculturally productive, with a large potential for livestock production.
Milk production in Nakuru is said to have been rising gradually in the past four years due to the adoption of good agricultural practices by smallholder farmers and increased investments in milk collection and cooling infrastructure by the Ministry of Agriculture, the County Government, and private sector players.
Governor Susan Kihika earlier said that her government, through sustained empowerment by processors such as New KCC and Brookside Dairy Limited, has been training dairy farmers on good dairy practices that encourage growth in milk volumes.
She said Dairy farmers in Nakuru were pocketing at least Sh 1.6 million daily in raw milk sales to processors.
The growing fortunes of dairy, she added, had seen nearly every household in all the 11 Sub Counties, especially those in the rural areas, keep at least one dairy cow, as families seek a regular source of income.
By Esther Mwangi and Meggy Njoki
