Feed & Land
Grazing when the rains allow, home grown fodder when they do not, and hay and silage put away for the months in between. The herd grows only as fast as the feed does.
Two rains a year bring the grass on across the grazing land and the farm’s own fodder blocks.
The herd walks out to graze and browse, taking what the land offers while it offers it.
What the animals cannot eat in the wet months is cut and made into hay and silage.
Every night in the pens leaves manure behind. It is gathered every morning, stacked and turned.
Composted manure goes back onto the fodder blocks, and the next rain grows more feed on better soil.
A short list of proven forages for Kenya’s drier country, chosen for yield, drought tolerance and what each one is best at: grazing, hay, silage or protein.
A deep rooted perennial grass that stays green well into the dry season. Leafy, palatable and good in protein for a grass, it can be grazed or cut and comes back after both.
The hay grass of Kenya’s drylands: hardy, quick to establish, spreading by runners and forgiving of poor seasons.
Tall, heavy yielding and hungry. On black cotton soil with manure and water it produces more bulk per acre than anything else on the list.
A fast annual that tolerates heat and short rains, grown for a single heavy cut of silage from each season.
Desmodium, lucerne and lablab in the fodder blocks, with fodder shrubs such as calliandra and leucaena along the edges: the protein that grass alone cannot supply.
The land beyond the farm: natural grass for the cattle and sheep, and acacia and shrub browse for the goats.
Fodder ground worked and laid with drip lines
The wet season surplus is the dry season ration. Conserving it well is the difference between a farm that sells animals in August because it has to and one that sells them when they are ready.
Grass cut, dried and baled: light to store, easy to feed, and the backbone of the reserve.
Green feed pickled in its own juice: heavy to handle, but it keeps the herd on moist, green feed through the driest weeks.
Kajiado does not have four seasons. It has two rains and a long dry, and every feed decision is really a decision about when the grass grows, when it is cut, and how long the store has to last.
Rainfall indicative for the Isinya area · not yet measured on site
Grazing does most of the work. What the animals find in the troughs and feeders at night makes up the rest, and it changes with the season.
Minerals & salt
Supplementary feed
Dry season reserves
Each new piece of land is there to grow feed before it is there to hold animals. The herd follows the fodder, never the other way round.
Blocks of Napier, Brachiaria and legumes on the home farm, watered by drip lines through the dry and fed with the farm’s own compost. Small, but enough to know this soil and keep a reserve.
Growing nowThe next purchase becomes the main feed production area: grass for hay, Napier and sorghum for silage, and legumes for protein.
NextLong term leases on 5 to 10 acre blocks, added as the herd grows. Each one is planted, fed with compost from the pens, and cut for the store.
As the herd needs itMore of the evening ration mixed at home from the farm’s own crops, and less of it bought in a bag.
Under way
The farm is looking for fodder land to lease long term (5 to 10 acre blocks to begin with) and for permitted grazing nearby. If you have ground around Isinya, we would like to hear from you.