The number of farmers accessing subsidized animal feeds from the kirinyaga county production factory has risen to 10,000 up from 1200.
Kirinyaga County Governor Ann Waiguru said the increase in demand for subsidized feeds is being driven by affordability and quality.
Speaking when she flagged off one of the consignments of bulk subsidized animal feeds for farmers through cooperative societies, Waiguru said subsidized feeds have helped lower the cost of milk production.
The 360 bags of dairy feed for members of the Kirima Dairy Cooperative Society will be distributed to livestock farmers at a price of Sh.2300 per 70kg bag against the current market price of between Sh.2900 – Sh.3500.
Waiguru said through the Wezesha Kirinyaga programme, the county government has been manufacturing and supplying subsidized animal feeds to farmers to help lower the cost of production so that farmers can earn more.
“This programme is helping farmers access affordable and quality animal feeds. It has helped in lowering the cost of production thus allowing farmers to earn more money,” Waiguru said.
“This effort has led to increased milk production from 2.5 liters to 7.8 liters. Our aim is achieving at least 12 liters per cow daily,” the Governor added.
To cope with the demand for the subsidized feeds, Waiguru said the county has added two manual and two semi-automatic duo processing lines to increase the capacity of the factory to 310 bags per day.
“When we started this programme, this production factory had only one line with a capacity of producing 110 bags of 70 kg animal feeds per day. Today the factory has grown big and we are now able to supply to many farmers cheap but quality animal feeds,” she said.
She said to enable farmers to earn more from dairy farming the cost of animal feed production must come down.
To guarantee the sustainability of the subsidized animal feeds programme, the governor said the county has partnered with cooperatives among them Kirima, Rukingo, and Pondago for the distribution of the subsidized feeds to dairy farmers.
“As we flag off this consignment of 360 bags of dairy feeds to Kirima Dairy Cooperative Society, allow me to say that our county has great potential in dairy production and investing in affordable and quality animal feeds, Artificial Insemination, and value addition projects can turn around the fortunes of thousands of dairy farmers,” the governor pointed out.
She said the county has cumulatively distributed 3358 bags of dairy feeds through the programme.
She said the county has also helped cooperatives deal with increased milk production, by providing them with milk coolers, standby generators, and yoghurt processing machines for value addition. Kirima, Rukingo, Pondago, and Rung’eto cooperatives have benefited from this initiative.
“To finalise with other efforts to promote dairy farming, we have given 60 farmers groups equipment for on-farm feed formulation. We have also supported 27 farmers groups with pulverizer machines and given out grass cutters to 32 groups to support fodder making.
By Mutai Kipngetich
