Research strategy

The area of the Tana Delta where the Orma people live is in a fairly remote area of Kenya. There is little in the way of documentation of the villages or of the households contained within them, and little was known of the sizes of either the human or the cattle population. Access is also difficult. Thus, it was impossible to develop a sampling frame from which villages and households within villages could be randomly selected.

It was concluded therefore that a pilot survey was needed in order to explore the distribution and accessibility of villages in the region, make contact with the community and collect some basic data on cattle keeping practices, disease prevalence and milk production.