DAIRY PRODUCTION CHALLENGES, HYGIENIC MILK PRODUCTION PRACTICES AND QUALITY ASPECT AMONG DAIRY PRODUCERS IN HULA DISTRICT, SIDAMA REGION, ETHIOPIA

Abstract

The objective of the study was to assess dairy production challenges, hygienic milk production practices and quality aspect of milk among dairy producers in Hula district, Sidama Region, Ethiopia. A total of 185 dairy producers from rural and urban/peri-urban area were selected for survey. Primary data was collected from households, key informants and through focus group discussion. Secondary data was collected from Hula district livestock and fisher office. Purposive sampling techniques were used to select district and kebele. Households were selected through simple random sampling technique. For milk microbial quality analysis 40 raw fresh milk samples (24 from rural and 16 urban/pri-urban households) were taken directly from the udder and milking bucket/plastic materials to analysis microbial quality. The results showed that majority (83.3%) of interviewed households were males. Most of the respondents (92.5%) reared local dairy cattle breed while small proportion (7.5%) rearing crossbred. Most of the respondent (93.7%) improved their dairy cattle by using local bull while 2.1% and 4.2% used crossed bull and AI service respectively. The major challenges of dairy production in the study area were shortage of feed (36.5%), lack of improved dairy cattle breed (28.35%), animal health problem (23.03%) and shortage of clean water at dry season (12.3%). Challenges related with milk quality were milk adulteration, lack of milk quality based controlling system, lack of quality marketing system and lack of cooling facility. Majority (90.5%) of the households under the current hand wash their hands before milking while the rest (9.5%) don’t. Udder washing before milk is not practiced by higher proportion (88.3%) of the households while the rest (11.7%) do wash. In the study area households use different types of plants for cleaning milk container including Tenadame (Ruta chalepensi, 48.9%), Datata (Lamium amplexicaule, 25.6%) and Bowanyamo (Pedicularis groenlandica, 25.5%). For smoking they used “tid” (Juniperous procera, 64.5%), weyra zaf (Olea africana stem, 12.9%) and were old bamboo (22.6%). There was significant difference (P<0.05%) in TBC and CC between rural and urban/peri-urban. The overall average total bacterial count (TBC) in rural and urban/peri-urban area were 6.0±0.05 and 5.06±0.03 log10 Cfu/ml respectively while coliform count (CC) were 5.1±0.08 and 4.6 ±0.05 log10 Cfu/ml respectively. In generally, milk from rural area had high total bacterial and coliform load as compared to the sample taken from the urban/peri-urban area. The reason for this could be the unhygienic activities such as unclean milking house and equipment, poor personal hygiene, contamination of milk due to infection of udder and teat with mastitis, urine and fecal material predispose the milk for contamination with high microbial load and makes it difficult to ensure production of milk with low microbial load. From this study it is been concluded the milk prhygenic production and microbial quality of milk from the urban/peri urban area is better and therefore extension work should focus in creating awareness and training dairy producers in about good milk production practice.