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    Goat milk re­search paper births milk sup­ply sta­tion

    A re­search paper on goat milk has been the spark that has trans­formed an idea of an in­tern into a milk sup­ply sta­tion pro­cessing over 120 litres of milk daily and now delving into yoghurt pro­cessing.

    Dr Simon Mwangi has no re­grets for hav­ing taken up goat milk pro­cessing. A veter­in­arian by pro­fes­sion, Mwangi now owns Zi­m­m­er­and Dairy Products Lim­ited in Git­hun­guri, Ki­ambu that sup­plies goat milk to Na­k­um­mat, one of the lead­ing su­per­mar­kets in the coun­try. They also sup­ply to in­di­vidu­als by order.

    Pro­cessing both fresh milk and yoghurt, they pro­cess at least 100 litres of goat milk every day. "The or­ders we get are over­whelm­ing," said Mwangi. "This is an in­dic­a­tion that people are get­ting to un­der­stand the value of goat milk.

    Selling at Sh130 for a half a litre, the milk has a shelf-life of up to 10 days for fresh milk and 15 days for Yoghurt.

    “Des­pite being a veter­in­arian, I had never thought of keep­ing goats for milk. But the in­tern who was doing a re­search paper on goat milk kept the idea alive. I de­cided to try out goat milk pro­cessing," he said.

    But the biggest set­back for him was sourcing for the milk. "Bear­ing in mind that goat farm­ers were dis­cour­aged be­cause the only goat milk pro­cessing plant in Ki­ambu had col­lapsed," he noted, "Farm­ers were left with milk without the mar­ket, many of them opted doing something else rather than goat milk busi­ness.

    Mwangi said he de­cided to try it and see what would come out of goat milk­ing pro­ject. He asked the in­tern to do a pro­ject pro­posal. "It was shock­ing to me that the pro­posal amoun­ted to Sh5 mil­lion and I had only set aside Sh1­mil­lion,” he added.

    But at long last, he man­aged to start the pro­ject and is up and run­ning. He col­lects milk from Git­hun­guri, Meru and Nyeri. He pro­cesses at least 120 litres per day. They pro­cess both fresh and yoghurt.

    Asked of the set­back he has faced, Mwangi says trans­port from col­lec­tion points has been an issue. "Trans­port is costly, be­cause I mostly relay on pub­lic means. I be­lieve with time, I will get a bet­ter struc­ture on how to col­lect milk,” he added.

    He has also taken the ini­ti­at­ive of rear­ing good qual­ity breed of goat. "Am al­ways in the field to mon­itor the goats to make sure they are tamed well," he said.

    Dairy goat farm­ing is emer­ging as a high-re­turn op­tion for Kenyan small-scale farm­ers, al­though it re­mains hobbled in some re­gions by mar­ket­ing and dis­tri­bu­tion chal­lenges, even as the sec­tor soars in other nearby re­gions.

    In Meru re­gion, farm­ers are being turned back with their goats' milk from the local milk plant, due to its lack of ca­pa­city to sell the milk products on­wards. But in Nyeri, where strong mar­ket­ing chan­nels have been de­veloped, the local pro­cessing plant is call­ing for more milk ur­gently, now even of­fer­ing re­cord prices.

    Daily the Dairy Goats As­so­ci­ation of Kenya (DGAK) in Nyeri is re­ceiv­ing 250 litres from farm­ers, ac­cord­ing to the chair­man Warui Mwangi. Yet it's in­suf­fi­cient to meet the daily de­mand of 1000 litres a local pro­cessing plant is re­quir­ing. By con­trast, the Meru Goat Breed-ers As­so­ci­ation (MGBA), re­spons­ible for col­lect­ing and pro­cessing milk from over 300 mem­bers is cap­able of hand­ling only 50 litres a day.

    Any quant­ity bey­ond that will not be pro­cessed mean­ing it will be poured. This was the scen­ario in 2008 when as much as 6001itres of milk and its by-products were des­troyed mainly due to lack of local mar­ket and the ca­pa­city to dis­trib­ute fur­ther afield.

    However, much of the dif­fer­ence between the two re­gions lies in ac­cess to urban mar­kets and large-scale buy­ers based on re­la­tion­ships and ad­min­is­tra­tion, rather than loc­a­tion.

    Un­like the Nyeri farm­ers whose milk ends up being sold to a goat milk pro­cessing com­pany with the fin­an­cial abil­ity to dis­trib­ute the by products as far as Nairobi, the MGBA plant is run by goat milk farm­ers them­selves and though it makes byproducts, like yoghurts, its mar­ket is re­stric­ted to shop­ping out­lets not re­quir­ing bar cod­ing.

    Four years ago when Farm Africa was fa­cil­it­at­ing the MGBA pro­ject op­er­a­tions, its milk used to be sold in major su­per­mar­kets, in­clud­ing Na­k­u­matt, Uchumi and Chandaria. But when Farm Africa's bar code ex­pired, MGBA was left without one, which meant their milk sup­ply to these su­per­mar­kets was hal­ted.

    For dairy goat farm­ers, however, the Nyeri mem­ber­ship model has cre­ated a suc­cess­ful work­ing model of dairy goat mar­ket­ing. In 2007, the Nyeri or­gan­isa­tion had 11,000 mem­bers. Today it has 16,000. At the same time, its milk out­put has more than quad­rupled, from 50 to 70 litres daily to now 250 litres. Yet it can now mar­ket up to 1000 litres a day. As DGAK seeks to lure more farm­ers still into goat's milk, the re­sur­gence is also being driven by the in­tro­duc­tion of more pro­duct­ive goats, using ped­i­gree European bucks like Saanen, Ger­man Alpine and Tog­gen­burg.

    These when cross bred with local vari­et­ies can in­crease milk pro­duc­tion by up to 6 litres per goat daily. One buck can cost Sh25,000, while a cross bred can cost Sh10, 000. Yet these can still be bey­ond the reach of small-scale farm­ers, with local breed bucks cost­ing from Sh1000 to Sh5000.

    For this reason, DGAK has been fa­cil­it­at­ing farm­ers to be pooled into groups that are then given one cross-bred buck. In ad­di­tion to in­creas­ing milk pro­duc­tion, cross­breeds adapt well to the local cli­mate.

    They ma­ture fast and in a year they are ready to mate. On ma­tur­ity they weigh over 35 kg com­pared to local breeds that weigh 15kg after three to five months. Some local breeds that can be cross bred are the Galla and Zebu. Goat farm­ing com­pared to cow farm­ing is also more sus­tain­able on small pieces of land. "One acre of land if well man­aged can sus­tain 20 goats. Also goats eat more plant vari­et­ies com­pared to cows.

    The nu­tri­tional be­ne­fits of goat milk are also aid­ing its takeoff. It is re­com­men­ded to HIV suf­fer­ers as its high pro­tein mo­lecules are bet­ter ab­sorbed than other pro­teins and strengthens an­ti­bod­ies.

    Also for a mother who opt not to breast feed, the milk is an ample sub­sti­tute. Other areas where dairy goat ven­tures are being tried are more arid areas like Kitui and Mwingi in East­ern province.

    The gov­ern­ment's Arid Land Re­source Man­age­ment Pro­ject (ALRMP) is op­er­at­ing free, over 10 buck sta­tions for local farm­ers to cross breed. DGAK, mean­while, has seven sta­tions in Kenya. They work with donor agen­cies to train farm­ers around Kenya on Dairy Goat hus­bandry.

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