INITIAL DATA RECORDING

This covers the following:

SEXING is a very simple task involving physical viewing of the animal's rear underside. The sex is used as a category when calculating market price information. There is no error in sexing.

ORIGIN of the animal is practised for some of the 3 major markets for some time periods, but the information is not used for the average price determination; therefore it will not be discussed in this report; indeed I recommend that the data collection of Origin information is discontinued. There is no error factor in origin determination.

AGEING is the estimation from viewing of the age of an animal in years, in the range 5 to 10 years; if the animal is apparently more than 10 years the estimator is instructed to enter 10 years. This information once again is not used in the determination of average price information and therefore will not be discussed in this report; indeed once again I recommend its discontinuation. Error in ageing is probably +/- 1.5 years.

YARDAGE is the total number of animals for sale; NUMBER SOLD is as stated. As mentioned in the introduction, there can be factors which tend to make official statements on numbers sold an underestimate of the real number. Typically, for Dar, over a period of some days, the number sold is the same as yardage. For Themi, animals not sold on the Friday will typically be sold at Weruweru on the following Tuesday (the markets are within trekking distance of each other). For Weruweru the number sold should effectively usually be the same as the yardage. The data collection at Arusha and Moshi has consistently recorded both yardage and number sold at the header of the first data sheet for a market-day; the technique used at Dar however has been to add up train arrivals information from the train logs at the Pugu Station right next to the Market) for a period of 1 week (for the weekly report) or one month (for the monthly report).

I have tried to make daily yardage figures from these train logs, but have found that this theoretical ideal is not practically possible.

Thus I strongly recommend that at Pugu Dar with immediate effect a daily yardage is kept, using a hand-held tally counter or similar technique; The Number Sold may be recorded from the Pugu Office daily report sheet (which also contains potentially useful sex distribution information and average price), or it may be considered to be the same as the yardage figure.

The importance of yardage is to try to correlate shortages of cattle for sale with high prices, and conversely gluts of cattle for sale with low prices. This has been possible for some of the Arusha and Moshi data, but was not attempted for the Dar data, since w was lumped in 7-day tranches....

It is possible that yardage may have some determinant on whether to record or not for Dar on certain days - if it is discovered that there is a strong correlation between yardage and unit prices, then TLMP may set up some rules whereby yardage is taken at the start of every day, and a decision whether to record or not is then made according to the yardage figure (and the number of data days so far that week). For yardage, there is probably a +/- 30 possible error in counting 500 animals, i.e. +/- 6%.

TRN'ing - application of a temporary recognition number. This is done using 'cold' branding irons with the numbers 0 - 9. Usually a range of 1 to approx 80 or so is used (depending on market). Usually a fairly bright standard commercial enamel paint (red or blue) is used. As far as is known, no damage to hides is done by this branding, nor any health damage or damage to meat, but it is worthwhile checking that these angles have already been cleared. I did not actually get to see this TRN'ing process during any of the 5 market visits (and several revisits to Pugu), but I reckon the TRN'ing using this method takes a relatively longer time than it should using better techniques. I would recommend that (if we do not transfer en masse to a self-weighing system - which then probably does not need any TRN'ing) then we strongly consider using spray painting with stencils marked 1 to 99. Spray painting can be performed using special refillable spray cans recharged from a tyre footpump or similar device. As an alternative to TRN'ing, consider using cheap ear tags, depending on the economics and on the time taken.