Research on increasing milk production succeeds

Khilanath Neupane of Chitwan, Phulbari has been able to earn more by selling more milk these days without increasing the number of his cattles.
"I have five cattles and two buffaloes," the ex-Nepal Aman said, adding that he used to sell around 30 litres of milk earlier but since he has started feeding the cattles the new balanced dry heated feed developed for the cattles, they are producing around five to eight litres more increasing his income.
It is the first time in the domestic diary sector that such a dairy feed product is designed to meet the nutrition need of the high yielding cattle and buffaloes with more protein, fat, TDN, minerals and vitamins."We have done a long reaserch and developed the dry, heated balanced pellet feed that can help boost quality milk production," said Dr Dinesh Gautam, Chief Technical Officer of the Probiotech Industries Pvt Ltd, a company under the Nimbus Group.
"The company with supported from Practical Action has done extensive research in Chitwan and Gurkha to develop the feed that can not only help produce more milk but also quality milk with necessary fat and Solid Not Fat apart from fat all other solids, like vitamins, minerals, protein (SNF)," he said, adding that the cost of milk depends upon the ratio of fat and SNF in the milk.
"More the fat and SNF, more the price the milk get," he added.The reaserch was also felt necessary due to decreasing milk production in the country recently. "Until some years ago, farmers used to have milk holiay due to excessive milk production," said Deepak Dhoj Khadka of Practical Action. "But the situation has reversed, Nepal imports milk from India," he said, adding that Practical Action is helping Probiotech to research on cattle feed under its Access to Market programme.
There are 7.1 million cattle and 4.6 million buffaloes in Nepal, according to the Ministry of Agriculture (2008-09). "Of the total, 0.9 million cattle and 1.1 million buffaloes are in milking stage," it said, adding that Nepal produces 413,919 metric tonne (MT) of milk from cattle and 103,1500 MT of milk from buffaloes. The cattles produce 1.5-2 litres per day and buffaloes three litres per day But after the cattles feed the new pelle feed, they started producing more milk upto 3.5 litres.
Domestic cattles have not been producing more milk due to the lack of breeding programme, quality fodder, fodder cultivation awareness, feed-concentrate that is not balanced and low management knowledge of farmers, according to Gautam.Due to lack of knowledge of dairy farmers on nutrient requirement of animals, they are underfeed resulting in to lower production, he added.
The programme also aims at delivering knowledge and skills to smallholder dairy farmers through 'Dairy Chautaris' -- an initiative of the Market Access to Smallholder farmers (MASF) Dairy Project which bring together technical experts and farmers for transfer of knowledge and access to services that is aimed at over 3,000 smallholder dairy farmers in Chitwan, Dhading, Gorkha and Tanahu.
Practical Action and Nimbus (Pro Bio Tech) have entered into a partnership to research, test and deliver appropriate low costs, high nutrition feed through the existing supply distribution channel of Pro Biotech Industries Pvt Ltd under the brand name Shakti feed.