Alternative to amber nector!
on Melissa Hipkins (Rwanda), 25/Jul/2011 08:15, 34 days ago
It’s great to be back in demand again. Through a series of coincidences, I have been able to team up with an NGO that is keen to promote the dairy industry in Rwanda. They are doing so by setting up a business connected with milk processing which will be able to pay farmers a premium for their milkprovided it meets certain quality standards. The NGO can do this because it will not be subsidising the price but paying it through the profits it will generate by the sale of the milk products. In this way it is hoped the benefits will be sustainable.Dairying in Rwanda suffers from much the same problems as dairying throughout the whole of sub-Saharan Africa. The constraints can be summarised under a very few headings.The native cows have very poor genetics in terms of milk production. This is being addressed and the importation of Holstein-Friesian semen is slowly altering the inherent characteristics of the cows towards producing more milk. We have only to hope that this does not turn into a headlong rush along the genetic path of production to the exclusion of all else; the problems encountered by European and American cows going along the same route over the last 30 years will surely prompt caution and moderation.Cows here are predominantly owned by smallholder farmers. Often they are family concerns with rarely more than 10 cows being milked, but because the herd will also include young non productive animals and all the males there is much pressure to find enough to feed them all. The available land is mostly crops, fields of grass are virtually unknown and in any case the national policy is to confine cattle and zero graze them; that is to say grass and forage has to be gathered from where it grows and taken to the cows. The forage crops are often put in odd corners of the plots of vegetables or the verges of roads, and many of the sites are remote from the farm. This makes conventional grazing very difficult to control; properly managed zero grazing is a more efficient use of the available land. However, it makes the cows entirely dependent on the food presented to them and therein lies the next limitation to milk production-feeding. Sources of concentrated food, that is grains or roots are very limited and proportionally very expensive. In any case, they are probably better reserved for the population. Increasing production by feeding is a way forward but probably its future lies in the better use of traditional sources than simply stuffing the cows with carbohydrates.Cows produce milk only after giving birth to a calf. It is possible for a cow can give milk for years on the back of having had only one calf, but the daily amount she will give will soon be a pittance. In order to boost production and to exploit a period of more effective food conversion in the immediate post calving months, she needs to have a calf frequently, once a year is the ultimate aim. Female calves are the means by which the farmer can increase his herd size and in theory his income. Male calves are a nuisance. In line with the commitment to improve the genetics of the national herd, it is government policy to use accredited sires by artificial insemination. A I is a great idea; it saves the problem of managing a bull and all the problems associated with safety, expense in buying a good one, risks of disease and consequent infertility and the nagging fear of this costly investment ending up dead one day. The success of A I depends entirely on the farmer recognising the sometimes subtle signs of oestrous and knowing when to call the technician. This takes a lot of experience and training on the farmer’s part. It’s in this area that the system tends to break down; on farms in the UK with all their resources oestrous detection often falls below 50%. Added to this is the problem that castration of the male calves is very rare. Even some university herds have no separation of potent males from the cows so naturally it can be a race as to who notices a cow in oestrous; according to some of the scanning I have done the adolescent bulls can be pretty slippy. This all sets back any slight inroads that A I has managed to make.So far we have poor genetics, small herd size, inefficient feeding and long intervals between calvings all contributing to low milk quantity. The problem that I have been asked to help with is poor quality of milk.Small herd size means efficiencies of scale cannot be exploited. This means machine milking is far too expensive to install for all but the most favoured herds. In many ways in a land where there is no shortage of labour and that labour comes very cheaply the lack of machinery is no great disadvantage. In developed countries, time and again problems associated with milk quality can be traced back to lack of milking machine cleaning and maintenance. However, hand milking while not especially hazardous for the cow exposes the milk to a galaxy of sources of bacterial contamination. The open bucket is a receptacle for milk and all the dust, hair, skin flakes and cow dung that accompanies it. Udder and teat cleaning are rare as is the washing of milkers’ hands. I have read of some milkers dipping their hands into the milk in order to provide lubrication to make milking easier-not a thought that makes you want to drink raw milk. The pail is then tipped through a cloth filter into a churn and left until all the other cows are milked. This soup nowfaces a delay of 2-4 hours before it gets to the reception dairy and can then be refrigerated, so figures of more than 1,000,000 bacteria / ml are common.The udder exposed to such a bacteria-rich environment inevitably succumbs to infection. Acute clinical mastitis is relatively rare; chronic symptomless mastitis is the usual outcome. The inflammatory cells generated by the udder to counter this chronic inflammation and the changes wrought to the other components of the milk comprise the other quality issue. We have the task of observing what milking practices are being employed and deciding which are significant in the contribution to the contamination. We have to trust the results we are getting from the testing laboratories, suggest changes to the routines that will be effective and at the same time persuade the milkers that these changes are necessary; that even one milking when they are not done will make a difference to the milk they produce. Then we have to devise fair tests for the quality of the milk the farmers are presenting and a system of payments that will further reinforce the drive for quality.The business needs to have sufficient daily supplies of high quality milk before the processing plant can be established. Up to now, they have attracted about 500 litres per day. They need 2000 litres to be viable. The NGO has calculated that there is possibly 6-8000 litres being produced within a 2 hour transport radius of the dairy reception centre, but most of this milk is of unknown quality. It will be an interesting period and there’s only 4 months before I go back.Melissa and I were on the bus back to Nyanza from Kigali one Sunday. We had completed about three quarters of the journey and the passengers had begun to thin out. As is usual on the buses, the noise of conversation rivals the volume of the bus radio and it was remarkable that we could hear the sound of a stream of water falling on the bus floor and the sudden decrease in the chatter from the seat behind us. The immediate thought in my mind was that it didn’t sound like a spilt drink but something more sinister. A passenger from across the aisle poked me on the shoulder and stared meaningfully at the floor. I took it for a moment that he was accusing me of being the miscreant, but then it was obvious he was being helpful in pointing out that our rucksacks lay in the path of the oncoming liquid seeping from underneath the seat. Now with rucksacks on our knees and Melissa regretting she had chosen to wear open-toed sandals, we expected to have a damp but uneventful end to our journey. Not so. A few minutes later, there was a deafening detonationand everyone jumped. The bus quickly came to a halt. People searched about them to find the cause. Grenade attacks have happened on buses, but none lately. All we could see was a creamy liquid spreading over the window next to a stunned and bewildered old lady. I thought the liquid was on the outside and that someone had thrown something from the road and hit the bus. The old lady, still dazed, was pulling from inside a soggy brown paper bag a plastic 5 Ltr container that was now lidless. The smell of fermentation gave the clue that the heat and motion of the bus had been too much for the capon her bottle of banana beer and the whole thing had frothed and blown. Everyone now much relieved started to laugh, all except the driver who didn’t see the funny side as he was going to have to clear it up. He was all for booting her off the bus, but the passengers and his better side prevailedand she was allowed to go on to complete her journey. She remained non-plussed and offered no explanation or apology. She descended still stupefied; perhaps imagining how she would explain the loss to an irate customer.