Work on the Livestock systems research manual started in 1986 and has been conducted under the supervision of a Steering Committee of ILCA staff. The work was executed within the programme of the Livestock Policy and Resource Use Thrust.
The manual is primarily the product of Martin Doran who worked at it in stretches over a period of two years. He drew so much on the knowledge, skills and assistance of ILCA scientists that authorship has been attributed to ILCA as a whole rather than to any one individual. Nevertheless, Martin Doran drafted almost every word of the manual. He did so with the general support of Stephen Sandford who, as coordinator of the Livestock Policy and Resource Use Thrust, reviewed and commented repeatedly on almost every part of the manual. The third major contributor was Inca Alipui. She was instrumental in adding clarity and precision, and in making the manual easier to read went far beyond the normal role of a language editor.
Other substantial contributors to Section 1 of the manual were John McIntire, whose constructive comments shaped Module 3, and Barbara Grandin who helped with data and reference material; Trevor Wilson who provided data and extensive reference-material for Module 5; John Tothill who was most helpful in the writing up of Module 6; Jess Reed and Douglas Little who commented on Module 7; and Brian Perry of ILRAD, Nairobi, without whose substantial input in the form of data and references Module 8 would have been incomplete.
Comments on the first draft were given by Ralph von Kaufmann (Module 3); Barbara Grandin and Solomon Bekure (Module 4); Ray Brokken (Module 5); Pieter de Leeuw and Pierre Hiernaux (Module 6); Michael Goe (Module 7); and Olajide Kasali and Eddie Mukasa-Mugerwa (Module 8). In addition to commenting on range resource evaluation, Pieter de Leeuw read the whole Section 1 of the manual for technical accuracy.
John Sherrington, ILCA's biometrician, rewrote the greater part of Module 11 in Section 1 and commented on the statistics in Section 2. Credit for the contents of the main statistical module (number 2) in Section 2 goes to Robin Sayers, his predecessor. Brian Perry's substantial contribution to the Animal Health Appendix to Module 2 is also gratefully acknowledged.
