Atlantic veterinarian doubles milk production for Kenyan farmers
A professor at Charlottetown's Atlantic Veterinary College says some Kenyan farmers he is working with have dramatically increased their milk production.
Dr. John VanLeeuwen has travelled to Kenya 17 times through projects sponsored by the University of Prince Edward Island, Farmers Helping Farmers and Vets Without Borders Canada. VanLeeuwen will choose three vet college students to take him on each trip.
He and his students meets with farmers, inspect the living conditions for cattle, and suggest improvements.
On his most recent trip, he found two thirds of the farmers he's advised had cows who had doubled their milk production. Two farmers' production tripled.
Isaac Kaiyongi, a dairy farmer near Meru, Kenya, has three cows and before consulting with VanLeeuwen he was getting 17 litres a day in total.
"Now his production was not 17 for all three but 17 each," said VanLeeuwen.
Kaiyongi was letting his cattle walk around to graze on weeds. In the dry season that was often just some dried out grass and not very nutritious. After seminars with VanLeeuwen he built a cow shed to help protect them from sun and rain and planted Napier grass and sweet potato vines for them to graze on.
Sending children to school
The increased production has made a big difference for his family.
"That allowed him, he said, to send his two secondary aged kids to school and his one older kid to college," said VanLeeuwen.
Whole communities are being changed by the success of the dairy farms he said. In one community, where there were no banks before, there are now seven.
"Banks only go where there's money," he said.
"So you know that now there's a fair amount of money in this community. And it's a sustainable community."
On the 2015 trip, VanLeeuwen's veterinary team checked more than 150 animals from more than 120 farms over 14 working days.
