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NEWS & CURRENT AFFAIRS

The Nairobian

Why sheep and apartments are not strange bedfellows

Opinion

By XN Iraki | Feb 18, 2025

**Sheep in the White Highlands.** [XN Iraki]

Sheep are found in the highlands, with their thick wool to protect them from cold. You will find them on the slopes of the Aberdares (Nyandarua), Mount Kenya and other mountainous places.

There were more sheep during the colonial era when wool was a valuable export. Today, lamb or mutton has more value than wool, whose market has diminished. But think of it, you get wool from a sheep several seasons before the butcher does his work.

I recall that seasonal sheering, with wool parked and sold in bales. I hear it was exported to Australia. I can recall one of the shearing experts, Muhoro wa Gichuki.

Sheep complemented cattle and chicken as the other domestic animals. Farmers in need of quick money would sell sheep, not cows, which were only sold for big projects.

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With such a variety of sources, a meaty diet was easy to get. Today, in the white highlands, sheep are rare. There is less rangeland. Farmers prefer dairy cattle with milk sold daily.

That has raised the price of dairy cattle with breeders enjoying a windfall. Mzungu had lots of open fields to graze sheep. After uhuru, the large farms were subdivided into small plots making sheep rearing hard. Sheep are rarely zero-grazed.

Complicated life

60 years later, the plots inherited from mzungu have been subdivided further. Sheep have become rare, there is no land for them. Their prices have gone up, they are now reserved more for ceremonies.

This has complicated life for farmers. They no longer have the “middle animals.” They have either big animals like cattle or small ones like chickens. That has limited their economic degrees of freedom.

Could this explain why the price of chicken has gone up? It has less competition from sheep.

Does this explain the rise of pig farming? Is pig replacing sheep in the highlands?

There was something sentimental about sheep farming in the highlands. It represented an era of freedom and free-range grazing. I loved it. The equivalence in urban areas is the replacement of bungalows with apartments, which give occupants less freedom.

The decline in the sheep population and increase in apartments is driven by population growth, a taboo subject in Kenya, where some politicians are more interested in votes than voter’s welfare.

Some could argue the reduction in farm biodiversity is not good for agriculture. What else has declined in numb