Our consultancy branch The Friesian is involved in a three-year project to stimulate the private dairy sector in Ethiopia. The aim of this project is to increase the number of profitable dairy farms and firms in the Ethiopian private sector. As part of this project, expert Wytze provided last week a cow management training. Most attention in this course was for cow comfort and cow housing topics. More than 20 extension officers participated in this three-days training, coming from different Ethiopian regions. After the theoretical part, the group visited various Ethiopian dairy farms. On these farms there are some limiting dairy management issues, mainly with respect to cattle feed, fertility and cow comfort. For example: there are quite a few improvement points in the current housing facilities and the roughage, which mainly consists of straw supplemented with napier grass and hay. Wytze’s training will provide the extension workers better insight in daily cow management subjects, leading to better transfer of knowledge to Ethiopian dairy farmers.
Wytze tells: “milk prices in Ethiopia are high, but also milk cost prices are relatively high. It’s important to gain better insight in the finances of the daily operations on a dairy farm”. More trainings are foreseen!
