Dairy farmers affiliated to Kieni Dairy, Nyeri County in Kenya are set to increase quality and quantity of milk production after they received a feed mixer and other machines to improve animal feed.
The farmers were mostly relying on traditional feeding practices like natural pastures, crop residues, cut-and-carry grass, forage crops and local feedstuff, as well as communal grazing which significantly inhibited their dairy cows’ milk production.
Using supplements for both energy and protein-rich feeds for dairy animals has been linked with increased milk production. Upon the realization of the same, farmers from Kieni started sending proposals to donors in order to source for capital to purchase machines for production of high-quality feeds.
Project benefits
A 26 group-members of Njung’wa Community Based Organization, one of such groups forwarded a proposal to the World Bank through the Kenya Climate Smart Agriculture Project (KCSAP). KCSAP is a programme jointly funded by the Government of Kenya and the World Bank. It aims at increasing agricultural productivity and enhancing resilience and coping mechanisms to climate change risks in the targeted smallholder farming and pastoral communities.
The 26 members’ proposal was approved and was funded with Sh920, 000 in the financial year 2020/2021 which they used to purchase a feed mixer and a hammer mill. Feed mixers are used in feed mills for the mixing of feed ingredients and pre-mixes. The mixer plays a vital role in the feed production process, with efficient mixing being the key to quality feed production.
If feed is not mixed properly, ingredients and nutrients will not be properly distributed and this means that the feed will not have nutritional benefit and would be bad for the animals that are consuming it.
On the other hand, a hammer mill is a farm machine which mills grain into coarse flour to be fed to livestock. The mill’s purpose is to shred or crush aggregate material into smaller pieces by the repeated blows of little hammers.
The members, whose targets go beyond eight litres per cow per day, have significantly benefited from the equipment provided which they now use to produce high quality feeds for their animals and subsequently increasing both quality and quantity of milk produced.
Additionally, the equipment which was purchased and installed after they rented a room at Gatuamba trading centre, has been of great help, as the feeds produced have been extended for use in other value chains including poultry, goats and pigs increasing production for the same.
The group Chairman Michael Ndiritu and Secretary David Gitonga expressed their gratitude to Nyeri Governor Mutahi Kahiga and area MCA Richard Kamuhia for making their dream a reality.
“We are grateful to the governor, the MCA and the KCSAP team for facilitating the purchase of the equipment for us, as they have been of great benefit. We were also provided with Rabbits for rearing and Hass Avocados for nutrition improvement for which we are thankful for,” noted Ndiritu.
“The group will start arrangements of settling in our own plot so that we can expand our work and use the project commercially to ensure our project is viable. This is a dairy mechanization project which will notably transform this area as well as create employment opportunities for the local youth,” added Gitonga.
