A well-managed profitable farm

A well-managed profitable shamba
By Teresa Mellish Jan 20, 2007

We saw a well-managed shamba (farm) today which was profitable. The farm was three acres, of which two acres was in tea. The other acre was used for the dairy operation .

The farmer, Mr. Salesia K. Kanake, told us that he was making 8,000 KES profit per month from the dairy operation. He was shipping forty litres of milk each day from the three cows he milked. He had three calves, one 9 month old heifer and a 6 week old calf. Daniel Bondt and Ken Mellish, dairy farmers from PEI, agreed that that any Canadian farmer would be proud to have such good looking calves. Mr. Kanake told us: “ Since I went to your information session last year and had listened to the advice about how to feed calves, I have better calves.”

During the past year , Mr. Kanake has been working with the agronomist, Mr. Stephen Chadi. Stephen is employed by the Embu Dairy Cooperative Society, with funding from Farmers Helping Farmers and the Canadian International Development Agency, to show dairy farmers how to grow and harvest better crops to feed their cows so they can increase their milk production.

We were delighted that Mr. Kanake is doing many things that we have been recommending for the past two years. He is cutting and feeding his napier grass to the cows when it is about 1 metre high, which is the height which will give him the optimum yield and quality. He is improving the protein feeds for his cows including growing desmoduim (a legume), sweet potato vines and calliandra (forage tree). He has cut and preserved napier grass as silage in a polythelyene bag when it was available during the wet season so that he had feed for his cows during the dry season. He is also using the manure produced by the cows to fertilize the napier grass.

We were so pleased to also see a bio-gas digester on the farm. The manure is used to produce gas- which is used as fuel for cooking. This means that the farm woman can cook the family’s food without having to inhale the smoke from a wood fire.