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    Molasses milk booster feed of­fers dairy farm­ers cheap al­tern­at­ive

    Dairy farm­ers in Uganda are set to be­ne­fit from an im­proved milk booster feed that doubles milk pro­duc­tion and is pocket friendly largely due to the use of loc­ally avail­able ma­ter­i­als like molasses and maize bran.

    The new milk booster is an end product of com­bined ef­forts by a team of re­search­ers from Maker­ere Uni­versity led by Dr. Fred Kabi de­part­ment of Ag­ri­cul­tural pro­duc­tion. Ac­cord­ing to Dr. Kabi, the product is ex­pec­ted to bol­ster the rap­idly grow­ing dairy in­dustry as well as mit­ig­ate mal­nu­tri­tion, ex­treme hun­ger and poverty through im­proved milk pro­duc­tion, nu­tri­tion and im­proved daily cash flow among farm­ers. The milk booster is a new in­nov­a­tion in­volving the use of sugar cane in­dus­trial waste of molasses mixed with other in­gredi­ents like maize bran, cot­ton seed cake, urea, min­eral salts and lime. The pro­ject was born three years ago under a re­search titled ‘Par­ti­cip­at­ory re­search for tech­no­logy de­vel­op­ment on use of Molasses Urea Blocks (MUB) and local feed­stuff for im­proved dairy cattle pro­duc­tion in Uganda.’

    In order to suc­cess­fully carry out the pro­ject, the re­search­ers partnered with Kakira Sugar Works Ltd, Kakira Out­grow­ers Rural De­vel­op­ment Fund (KORD) and Dairy De­vel­op­ment Au­thor­ity (DDA), to con­duct a par­ti­cip­at­ory re­search for tech­no­logy de­vel­op­ment aimed at util­iz­ing sug­ar­cane in­dus­trial waste like molasses for im­proved dairy cattle pro­ductiv­ity in Uganda.

    “Our concept was hinged on build­ing on the com­ple­ment­ary syn­er­gies between the private sec­tor who have the ne­ces­sary raw ma­ter­i­als and the sci­ent­ists from the pub­lic sec­tor who are equipped with know­ledge,” ex­plained Kabi. Using this concept the team has de­veloped a molasses urea dairy sup­ple­ment­ary feed which in­creases milk pro­duc­tion by over 50­per­cent.

    Ac­cord­ing to Dr. Kabi, the Milk booster has a rear com­pon­ent which is urea that fa­cil­it­ates proper func­tion­ing of the mi­cro­bial pop­u­la­tion in the rumen. “With the new tech­no­logy from Novus In­ter­na­tional, the milk booster has been for­ti­fied with mi­cronu­tri­ents and aflatoxin bind­ers which will not only im­prove on pro­ductiv­ity of the dairy an­im­als but also step up the keep­ing abil­ity of the feed for over one year.” Kabi fur­ther ad­vised that one needs to ac­cus­tom the an­imal to the feed for four days be­fore em­bark­ing on full sup­ple­ment­a­tion.

    The mo­ment the an­imal gets used to it, it will im­prove on its di­gest­ib­il­ity be­cause it in­creases the rate of food fibre break­down by the mi­cro­bial pop­u­la­tion in the gastro-in­test­inal tract. By sup­ple­ment­ing 1 kg per an­imal per day, a farmer in­creases milk pro­duc­tion by over 30 per­cent .For in­stance a cow pro­du­cing 10 litres will in­crease milk pro­duc­tion to about 15 litres while the one pro­du­cing 20 litres in­creases to about 30 litres per an­imal per day hence im­proved daily cash flow, bet­ter house­hold nu­tri­tion, bet­ter health of the calves that will con­sti­tute to­mor­rows herd for the farmer.

    Farm­ers hav­ing eval­u­ated the product in a stake­hold­ers meet­ing that in­volved sci­ent­ists, the private sec­tor, local gov­ern­ment in the early stages of re­search they agreed to set its’ re­tail price at UGX1000.​However the pri­cing may fluc­tu­ate mainly due to the changes in the prices of molasses which is one of the major com­pon­ent for man­u­fac­tur­ing the milk booster. The milk booster has already been tested on 100 dairy farms in the dis­tricts of Jinja, Ig­anga, Kam­uli, May­uge and Mukono with im­press­ive res­ults.

    Ac­cord­ing to Dr.​Kabi, driven largely by dairy, the live­stock sec­tor has main­tained pos­it­ive growth rates av­er­aging 3per­cent per annum com­pared to the de­clin­ing growth rates re­gistered in the food and cash crop sub-sec­tors. “In­nov­at­ive af­ford­able dis­cov­er­ies like our new found re­search on milk booster will help shape the live­stock and dairy in­dustry to com­pet­it­ive edge like other neigh­bour­ing coun­tries es­pe­cially Kenya. Ac­cord­ing to stat­ist­ics from Uganda Bur­eau of Stat­ist­ics (UBOS), total na­tional milk pro­duc­tion has grown from 460 mil­lion litres in 1990 to 1.6 bil­lion litres in 2011, with per cap­ita milk con­sump­tion grow­ing from 16 litres in 1986 to 58 litres by 2010.

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