 Busheni in Western Uganda seems a perfect place for dairy farming. It has the right climate and large grazing fields that are lush for the better part of the year. Traditionally, the lives of people here have revolved around rearing and culling cattle. But times are changing. Many farmers are moving to commercial agriculture with an increasing number looking to dairy farming. The farmers typically cross their indigenous cattle to high yielding exotic European and North American dairy breeds. But for most of these farmers, the high milk yields they expected up to 30 liters per cow have been elusive. The problem of low milk yields has defied many previous attempts to fix it. Greatly frustrating farmers' ambitions as one of them here narrates. We expected to tell us which kind of animal should be keeping. So from here, we zeroed what, for example, in the butter here, which will be the best animal that farmers should go in for. Ki tumbaya seiti ni kukosandume. Hapo njuma ilu kwa heiai, ilu kwa natemi. We expected to tell us which kind of animal should be keeping. So from here, we zeroed what, for example, in the butter here. Ki tumbaya seiti ni kukosandume, ilu kwa heiai, ilu kwa natemi. Nga alukua na kucha na mamaiyo yao. Natuluku na pata na mamusuri sana. The farmers didn't know exactly the dairy cattle breeds that they have. Neither were they comfortable with the services that were being provided in terms of breeding services and the type of marketing services that were available. Work of the four-year dairy genetics East Africa, DGEA project, investigated this problem of low milk yields by crossbreed dairy cows. What we hoped to achieve by implementing the project was to find out whether our objectives were real. That is, could we provide farmers with well-documented evidence to show exactly what breeds they have and how best they suit their conditions and also influence the other actors to put in place or to come up with models to deliver those breeds to the farmers effectively. The process of identifying the right breeds required that a large number of farmers be enlisted for this study. As a result, 1,100 households were recruited at different project sites in Kenya and Uganda. A total of 2,500 cows from these households were evaluated for productivity for a period of two and a half years. Additionally, state-of-the-art genomic technology was used to determine the breed composition of the cows. What farmers knew they had was slightly different from what they really had. In addition, every two months a group of enumerators recorded the husbandry practices, socio-economic conditions and animals' performances on each farm. We worked in two countries, Kenya and Uganda, so we were able to look at the difference between those two countries and farming systems. We looked as well broadly at the cost of production for those kinds of systems and understanding better farmers' characteristics in those areas. Many Kenyans and Ugandan farmers who participated in this study wanted to know why their animals were not producing as much milk as expected. The biggest finding of this study was that the average milk yield was just 5 liters per cow per day. And the milk yield of the highest-grade animals, those that were almost pure exotic, was not significantly higher than that of the crossbreeds, only half exotic. It shows there is little advantage for small holders to upgrade their animals to talk to the highest levels if they cannot in addition provide the good feeding and management practices required by exotic animals' bread to produce the greatest amount of milk. The study showed that many adult cows have small body frames and low body weights, characteristics typical of stanting which could be a result of poor feeding. The study also found that the process of continuous but unrecorded upgrading and crossbreeding in this region has made it impossible for farmers to know the breed composition of their cows. Now that the participating farmers are armed with the knowledge of the exact breed composition of their cows and how they perform they can now make more informed breeding decisions. Before getting into touch with the Erie project I didn't know that there is another type of another good breed of cow but when we get into connection I understood that there is asha there is many types of breed With the information I've got I'm going to change because I know where to start from I know what to start with I know what to have when and how I know the right part to play. This project brought many of the dairy industry stakeholders together they identified priorities and developed strategies that gave farmers access to appropriate breeding stock Transforming this region's Ubiquish as smallholder dairy farming into viable commercial enterprises will help many families move out of poverty Although much remains to be done to give many more farmers across the region access to the right dairy animals the new knowledge generated by this project lays the foundation for building a thriving commercial dairy sector in East Africa.