Page 21 - Vol.37-No.1 issue

DAIRY FARMING

DELAVAL MILK QUALITY KITS IN FOOD FOR

DEVELOPMENT PROJECT

A Tetra Laval Food for Development by Heifer International. The project works
project in Kenya is improving the liveli- through a state-owned Tetra Pak process-
hoods of smallholder farmers. Nkosi Mkh- ing customer, NKCC.
ize, DeLaval Market Development Manag- “Lynda McDonald from Food for De-
er for East Africa has created a milk quality velopment reached out to me to create
kit with DeLaval products for the project. a milk quality kit with DeLaval products
for the project. I worked closely together
with our dealer in Kenya to make it hap-
pen. It’s great to see that the kits are well
received”, says Nkosi Mkhize, Market De- The overall goal for the project is to im-
velopment Manager for East Africa. prove the livelihoods of up to 30 000 small-
The project aims to increase milk pro- holder farmers in Kenya and increase
duction and improve milk quality for the their household income by increasing
local farmers, and a part of that is to pro- profitability through milk production and
vide best practice milk quality kits to help improving efficiencies, and focusing on
improve milk quality. The milk quality kits empowering women and youth to play an
have gone out to 11 farms who will be used active role in the dairy value chain.
Tetra Laval Food for Development is as reference farms for implementing best The four key objectives for the project
working on a dairy development project practices. The 11 farmers’ experience with are to increase the incomes of participat-
called KEMDAP (Kenya Market Led Dairy the milk quality kit will inform the further ing farmers and households, increase milk
Development Project), which is funded by adaptation and distribution of the kit to production, improve milk quality as well
SIDA (Swedish International Development other farmers in the future. as increasing milk collection volumes in
Cooperation Agency) and implemented milk collection centres.

Circle 25 on enquiry card
POLLED BULLS ARE ON THE RISE FOR

VIKINGHOLSTEIN

VikingHolstein is moving towards more very relevant comment that we take seri-
polled cows, and we believe we should ously. Teat size is in our focus.
speed this process up. Reality has shown A quick look at the global sales list of
the benefits farmers can get out of polled VikingHolstein bulls shows that both teat
genetics. Those advantages can be seen in thickness and length are slightly above av-
the bottom line when dairy farmers avoid erage, but with a huge variation.
investing in dehorning. It is worth highlighting some of the good
On the other hand, using genetics from daughter proven bulls (VH Cosmo, VH
polled bulls also counts as a good animal Manfolk, VH Sparky) as bulls that make
welfare practice. bigger teats, but also genomic bulls such
We believe that at least 25% of all pur- as VH Mario P, VH Mester and VH Crown.
chased bulls by the end of 2020 will be
heterozygotic polled, and 20% of those
bulls should be homozygotic. Our aim is What does the index mean
that by 2021, this percentage will be high- in reality?
er. More Red Holstein bulls Both thickness and length measure-
All under control ments are in average 5.3 on the scale from
Another decision we have made is to in-
The VikingHolstein programme has clude more Red Holstein bulls. So far, this one to nine, for all classified cows in one to
the polled gene distributed in the popu- has been a small part of the VikingHol- three lactation.
lation to maintain good variation. We can stein selection programme, where today These numbers can be giving us infor-
see there are more top bulls being polled. we purchase 3-4 bulls per year. The aim mation in centimetres, meaning teats are
We trust in keeping diversity and genetic is to duplicate the selection due to an in- on average 5.3 cm long. A bull with index
progress in balance. creased demand for X-Vik sexed semen. 90 in teat length will contribute with 3.4
To sharpen our process of female se- Focus on teat size mm shorter teats and on the other hand, a
lection, our VikingEmbryo program is im- bull with index 110 in teat length will con-
portant in order to know which bloodline “We need to be careful not to make tribute with 3.4 mm longer teats.
should contribute to the next generation the teats smaller.” This is a quote that we
of cows. sometimes hear from dairy farmers. It is a
Circle 26 on enquiry card
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