Abstract:
Pastoralists have a diversity of strategies to sustain livestock production which is important for
their livelihoods. However, recently climate change has had devastating impact on pastoral
way of life resulting into high livestock mortalities. Their strategies, based on centuries of
exposure to intra- and inter-annual droughts may not work well now due to extended drought
and constraints related to livestock movements. Thus there is a need to introduce innovations
that will increase resilience of pastoralists to cope with the vagaries of weather. In situ cattle
fattening is one of the adopted strategies. However, this is a new approach compared to free
grazing and may require empowerment of the communities to adopt new technologies
especially during period of pasture scarcity. The research adopted Participatory Action
Research (PAR) to empower livestock keepers to take advantage of the available resources.
Consequently it was expected that the nutritional and health status of animals will improve and
pastoralist will venture into dry season cattle fattening conditions. Preliminary evaluation
shows that the project has been accepted, but full adoption will depend on whether the
technology will fit into fanners' own strategies as well as resolving some challenges associated
with the practice
