Counting domestic animals, a review

Abstract

Reliable information on numbers of domestic animals are essential on a continent-wide as well as on a regional scale. This knowledge facilitates to guide and design the development policy of animal production and, also, to propose financial support from donors. Reliable information about animal numbers are scarce in developing countries, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. Therefore, it is necessary to proceed to countings using reliable methods, which have been already recently developed for counting game populations. There is an abundant literature with regard to game counting which is not the case for counting domestic animals. This paper presents a bibliographical review of methods employed and operations carried out to count domestic populations. Counting methods are presented and their statistical and operational principle described. The results obtained during various operations carried out mainly in sub-Saharan Africa are presented and discussed. The main techniques applied are direct and indirect counts, ground and aerial counts, exhaustive or by sampling counts. The strip transect method and the indirect methods for estimating animal abundance by ground investigation are largely described. The line transect and capture-mark-recapture methods are briefly presented. The choice of methods and existing means to count domestic animals is discussed at the end of the paper. New methodological approaches are also indicated.