ASSESSMENT OF DAIRY HUSBANDRY, PROCESSING AND MARKETING PRACTICES AND EVALUATION OF THE EFFICIENCY OF IMPROVED BUTTER CHURNER IN SELECTED DISTRICTS OF SOUTH OMO ZONE, ETHIOPIA

Abstract

The study was undertaken to assess smallholder dairy husbandry practice, dairy product processing, handling, and marketing and to compare butter yield recovery and time requirement efficiency between traditional and innovated churns at farm level in the South Omo Zone in Southwestern Ethiopia. A total of 163 (83 from Debub Ari and 80 from Benatsemay districts) households were randomly selected based on proportion to the total human population from the rural administrative. Multi-stage sampling procedure was employed to select smallholder dairy producers for the household interviews. Churning efficiency between traditional and innovated churn types were demonstrated and evaluated at farm level. The data were analyzed for the quantitative and quantitative data using statistical packages for social science (SPSS) version 21. The mean land size, mean age of HH and family size was 1.46±1.07 ha/HH, 42.98±10.73 and 6.29±2.60 person/HH, respectively. Common cattle feeding practices identified in the area were tethering, open grazing and stall feeding respectively. The main source of feed in Benatsemay district were both natural pasture and crop residue followed by natural pasture. Majority of the respondent households in Debub Ari district were owned local and crossbreed cattle whereas in Benatsemay local cattle breed were the dominant in the herd. Majority of the respondents in the area have had access to veterinary service, however, dairy husbandry and management training were not common to the study households. Natural mating, followed by natural mating and artificial insemination (AI) were identified as the common practices during heifers and cow breeding services. The houses type used for cattle in the study area were semi-permanent/temporary housing system and tethering at yard. Agricultural production system in Benatsemay district seems mainly agro-pastoral type while the Debub Ari farm system in ways to shift to mixed crop-livestock system. About 96.3% of the respondents were processes milk products from the whole milk. The post-harvest losses of milk and milk products were mainly due to lack of processing, storage and transportation materials. Majority of the respondents in the districts consume or sell milk early before spoilage. The time required for butter making in improved plastic milk churn (JAICA churn type) was 30.17± 1.72 (mean ± SD) minutes whereas traditional churn required was 43.83 ± 1.47 (mean ± SD) minutes for the same volume of milk at the same room temperature. The churning time required was significantly lower for the former compared to the latter (p< 0.05). Similarly, for equal weight-volume (w/v) content, the overall butter yield recovery was 0.82±0.06 kg; with 0.87± 0.06 kg (mean ± SD) for improved churn and 0.77± 0.08 kg (mean ± SD) for the traditional churn type at farm level, which revealed no significant difference (p> 0.05). This study finding therefore, reveal that there was significant difference on churning time requirement, however, no difference was observed on butter yield recovery efficiency between the improved and traditional churn types. Thus, the advantages of JAICA improved plastic churn in terms of cost benefit need further assessment over the traditional churn for butter yield recover efficiency.