Queen Elizabeth Scholars in Kenya

 by John VanLeeuwen

Our first week is over and we have had quite a week. After our endurance test flights from Canada to Nairobi, our group of 4 QEScholars from Canada, and Colleen Walton and I (QEScholar supervisors) arrived safely with all our bags on May 4. The group took the next day to recover from the travel by going to Kasuri Beads and Rimpa Estates in and around Nairobi. We then made it to Meru on May 6th, with stops on the way for some food and supplies and got settled into our new home at the Muruguma house near Naari. 

On the first morning of our first full day in Meru County, we met with FHF staff over breakfast at the Tosha Hotel, where we shared introductions, greetings and plans for the coming weeks. It was great to be back in Kiirua. After the meeting, we split up. Colleen and the QEScholars explored different parts of what FHF does in Kenya for orientation purposes, while I met with Salome Ntinyari, Erastus Kangethe, and Bernard Ndegwa to discuss the sheep and goat brucellosis seroprevalence and risk factor project that is part of the Gender-Responsive One Health project that FHF, UPEI and Alinea International are implementing in Meru County. We got supplies ready for our next days of activities in the field. 

In this blog, I will describe the veterinary projects that we (QEScholars Marika Wesselius and Molly Park and I) will implement during the next couple of months. They include:

1) Completing Dr. Essau Serem’s zero-grazing trial study, where we go back to the farms where we provided recommendations on how to convert to zero-grazing in 2025 to determine their compliance with the recommendations and determine the impacts of the implemented recommendations (and give recommendations to the control farms in the trial);

A zero grazing farm

2) Conducting Dr. Mercy Njoroge’s sheep and goat brucellosis seroprevalence and risk factor project, where we will go to 120 randomly selected sheep and goat farms to collect blood from 5 sheep or goats (to be tested for brucellosis exposure) and ask questions about the animals and management on the farm, and the impact that brucellosis might be having on the farmers and their animal handlers; and 

3) Initiating a new cohort of paravets affiliated with the Meru Central Dairy Cooperative Union into a paravet training program, where we will spend three days on farms enhancing their practical knowledge and skills on disease diagnosis, treatment and prevention, particularly for zoonotic diseases that require One Health approaches for good control, and then one day at a walk-in clinic where they can work on utilizing the new practical knowledge and skills to give vaccines and dewormer to all cattle showing up to the clinic, and check those animals needing individual attention.

On May 8, the vet group started working in the field on Dr. Serem’s project. We also went to two farms with 15 and 6 milking cows where milk was being rejected. 

A second zero grazing farm

We found 10 and 5 cows, respectively, with mastitis in at least one quarter, which largely explains their milk rejection. We gave advice on how to treat the cows and change their management to prevent further outbreaks of mastitis on these farms.

Farm 3: a farm with a mastitis problem: Marika, Molly and Serem discussing options for recommendations, and Naomi, an extension officer at Naari Dairy, is in the photo.

 The owners were very appreciative of our visit, considering the substantial revenue they were losing with the rejected milk. Hopefully they can turn things around quickly.