Presented by Karen Marshall at the FoodAfrica Annual Workshop, Kampala, Uganda, 27-28 January 2014

1. Senegal Dairy Genetics /
Sénégal Génétique Laitière
Karen Marshall
FoodAfrica Annual Workshop, Kampala, Uganda, 27-28 January 2014

2. Work package partners & objectives
ILRI, EISMV, HU, MTT, project farmers
To identify and promote utilisation of
the most appropriate dairy breed-
types for more productive and
profitable dairy enterprises in
selected production systems in
Senegal

3. Major activities 2013
1. Breed comparison
 Socio-economic study: gendered
 Major field component, 18 month monitoring
 Breed-type determined through genetic analysis
 2 sites: region of Thies and department of Mbacké (Touba)
2. Analysis of policies on dairy, particularly germplasm
production and delivery systems
3. Capacity building

4. Breed comparison: project sites

5. Field staff recruitment:
2 female and 4 male, mobilised by motorbikes
(due to cultural / religious reasons could not place female
staff at Touba)
Project sensitization in sites
Survey to identify suitable dairy households:
623 households surveyed,288 identified as suitable
(difficult to locate households as no complete list; lower
number of cross-breeds than expected)
Recruitment of 259 dairy households into project:
individual visits plus small group workshops; given
project leaflet and signed consent
Project launch events (n=3):
135 male and 74 female participants, as individual
dairy farmers and 11 organisations
Activities
January to
April 2013
Breed comparison: initiation

6. Project field staff
Thies site
Célestin Muyeneza
(MSc in animal production,
University of Dakar)
Ndeye Racky Ndiaye
(MSc in population genetics,
University of Dakar)
Touba site
Mame Diara Ndiaye
(Doctor of Veterinary Medicine,
University of Dakar)
Mamadou Lo
(Doctor of Veterinary Medicine,
University of Dakar)
Sene Moudou
(Diploma of Livestock Production,
CNFTEIA, St Louis)
Elhadji Sow
(final year DVM,
University of Dakar)

7. Farmer sensitisation activities

8. Project launch events
National & site level launch at Thies Ministers representative
Site level launch at
Touba

9. Baseline survey: two survey tools – household head
and adult female (259 households)
(due to religious reasons unable to interview females in
some households)
Longitudinal survey round 1: socio-economic +
individual animal data; animals ear-tagged; each staff
attached to ~40 households
(virtual ear tags used when farmers did not allow tagging;
‘transhumant’ survey developed)
Longitudinal survey round 2: socio-economic + milk
yield. Farmers trained in use of recording sheets and
milk measuring
(procurement difficulties for field equipment, esp. milk jugs)
Longitudinal survey round 3: socio-economic + milk
yield (241 households)
(implemented automated animal identification system in
database; recapture of missing / incorrect data)
Activities
April to
December
2013
Breed comparison: socio-economic data

10. Ear tags
Project animals number 3100 with 670 lactating females,
105 different breed-types (Dec 2013)

11. Field staff working with project dairy farmers

12. Type of information collected on dairy households
Continual recording for 18 month+ period
Costs
• Labour
• Feed + water
• Health-care
• Housing
• Mating
• Marketing
• Replacement
animals
• Equipment
• Co-operative fees
Benefits
• Milk & milk
products: sold or
consumed
• Manure
• Sale of dairy animals
• Sale of sire services
Animal & herd level
• Animal information:
breed, age, parity,
last calving date,
mating date,
pregnancy status,
date of birth, dry-off
date
• Milk records
• Entries into herd:
births, purchase etc.
• Exits from herd:
deaths, sale etc.

13. Example survey table
Gendered information on all costs + benefits

14. Milk measuring

15. Body condition score: collected on all lactating
females in selected survey rounds
Milk quality (protein and fat): obtained on 310 animals
using field-based milk analyser
Body weights and body measurements
Hair samples for DNA analysis and subsequent breed
composition: first 104 samples genotyped
Activities
June to
December
2013
Breed comparison: other data

16. Milk quality

17. Weights and body measurements

18. … but not always so easy

19. DNA samples

20. Preliminary SNP analysis results
104 animals: clusters represent the different breed-types

21. Data mana
Management of field data
Each field staff
enters own survey
data into CSPRO
data entry
interface Project database
manager, in Senegal
Data collation, data
checking, back-up
Recollection of missing /
erroneous data
MySQL database
User access
Farmer reports

22. Policy analysis
 Generated via desk-top review combined with
key informant interviews (in progress)

23. Capacity building: project farmers
Use of recording
sheets, milk
measurements
Domestic biogas, with
Heifer International
Senegal
 9 training events
 146 female and 366
male farmers
Farmer biogas training

24. Capacity building: field staff
Survey
implementation +
data -entry
 4 training events of
5 days
 Trained by ILRI and
EISMV staff
Professor Missohou from EISMV
supporting training of field staff

25. Capacity building: students
Program Country Gender
PhD Cameroon Male
PhD
(attachment)
Nigeria Female
Masters Benin Male
Masters Finland Female
DMV thesis
component
Senegal Male

26. Main challenges 2013
 Unable to establish ILRI hosting arrangement in Senegal
 High number of project activities (to compensate for time
lost due to project relocation)
 Large volume of project data
… but excellent project team (n=23) & project partner relations

27. 2014 work-plan
 Completion of field-work (longitudinal surveys + DNA sampling)
 Analysis of survey data
 Household clustering
 Breed assignment to individual animals + clustering
 Estimate of cost & benefits for each breed x household cluster (dependant
on group size)
 Socio-economic breed comparison
 Further farmer trainings combined with feedback workshops
 Policy and value-chain analysis
 Support to project students
 Additional activities e.g. aflatoxin & brucellosis testing, feed analysis

28. FoodAfrica supervisory board visit to project site
http://senegaldairy.wordpress.com/