African Goats Test World’s First Environment-Friendly Male Contraceptive

In drought-stricken Kenya, male goats are forced to fire blanks by wearing a condom that will prevent them from breeding to save on scant resources.

Made from cowhide or anything from braided grass to discarded wood pieces or old sandals, the condom is not a sheath but a home made contraption that is designed to get in between the buck’s belly and the doe’s genitalia thus preventing mating.

In the absence of modern breeding methods in remote districts of Kenya mainly inhabited by Maasai herdsmen, the traditional condom, or olor in the local language, is secured under the belly with a rope or elastic strap.

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The billies would wear the ‘contraceptive’ for three months in the year until the next breeding season when the long awaited rains fall. Many African herder communities face the dilemma of controlling their livestock population amidst depleting feed and water especially when rains fail.

For the Maasai herdsmen, the olor saves on separating the males from the females allowing them to continuously herd them together without fear of impregnating the nannies, according to the BBC.

An unwanted impregnation of a neighbor’s nannies attracts hefty fines which no one would be ready or afford to pay. Instead, a traditional, time-tested ingenuity that is environmentally-friendly comes in handy. No kidding!

Image credit: DEMOSH at Flickr under a Creative Commons license.

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