•With the prices of weak cows now fetching as little as Sh500, half the cost of a traditional chicken, Sein now says he sees no hope if it does not rain in the next two weeks.
•Sein is not alone, not far from his farm is Joshua Punuka’s in the Namelok area. Punuka is throwing more than 5 carcasses of his dead cows every other day.
Peter Sein, a farmer in the Olgulului group ranch in Kajiado county, is a worried man over the fate of his livestock under the current drought.
“I no longer sleep. Nightmares have taken away my sleep. My great worry is to wake up one morning to find all my cows dead,” said Sein.
With more than 100 cows on his farm the in Olgulului group ranch that require feeding each day, Sein says he has seen it all in this drought.
“When I wake up in the morning and look at my cows, they all turn to look at me with tears in their eyes. They want something to eat. I have shed tears many times, but the heavens have refused to open up,” says Sein.
With the prices of weak cows now fetching as little as Sh500, half the cost of a traditional chicken, Sein now says he sees no hope if it does not rain in the next two weeks.
With the price of a bale of grass hay rising above Sh500 from Sh150, several months ago, feeding 100 cows that require more than 3 bales of hay each per day is an uphill task for Sein.
“I have learnt a very big lesson in this drought that I will never forget. Keeping such a huge herd of cows does not make any sense. The drought is now taking its toll on them,” regrets Sein.
He is praying for the rains to fall and that if it rains, he will sell all his traditional cows and but a few graded cows and sink a borehole.
“I am no longer putting on a trouser. I spend all my time in the bushes, living like a wild animal. I have wealth in the form of thin cows that I cannot even sell because they are skinny,” says Sein.
Sein is not alone, not far from his farm is Joshua Punuka’s in the Namelok area. Punuka is throwing more than 5 carcasses of his dead cows every other day.
Most of the livestock farmers stuck to their stocks when the drought started last year, hoping that the long rains would come in April.
April, this year, set in with more heat on the farmer. The October short rains failed again and the weatherman is not even sure that Kajiado will see rain again in April, next year.
With the prices of livestock plummeting to the lowest levels, farmers in the region are almost leaving everything to fate.
On Friday, last week, the prices of frail cows and sheep came down stumbling to Sh500 and Sh100 respectively.
With the prevailing high cost of hay and also the high cost of buying and transporting water to the villages, selling 20 frail cows will only fetch Sh20,000 which is not enough to feed the remaining livestock for a whole day.
Another major problem is reaching the livestock markets with skinny cows which cannot move without assistance.
Solomon Ketukei, a livestock broker in the Bissil livestock market, told the Star on Friday that most of the frail cows brought into the market die at the end of the day.
“People come to buy healthy cows that can move and not those assisted to wake up. We use to buy the weak cows at even Sh20,000 but our business partners are now not for them,” said Ketukei.
Most of the farmers who brought their frail cows to sell at the livestock market claimed the ongoing supply of livestock feed distributed by the county government has not reached them.
“We are always hearing on radios that famine relief food and livestock feed have been distributed in Kajiado but we have not seen them,” said Mary Senteu.
The ravaging drought in the county has forced residents who depend on these animals for their livelihood to dispose of them to buy food and other necessities.
The prices are however so heartbreaking, it sounds unbelievable.