By Joshua Kato
In Luwafu, Makindye division, a herd of clean, white goats munches away at fermented grasses, commonly known as silage. The white goats are housed in wooden/timber structures fixed inside part of a bungalow. The structures are raised by at least a foot off the ground. This is Kanyes Dairy Farm, a unique, goats urban farm.
“We started the dairy goats farm in 2018,” says Juliet Kanyesigye, the owner. The urban farm now has 18 goats. Kanyesigye bought each goat at sh1m. “These are Sanen breeds. They are not so common in Uganda, however I decided to keep them because I wanted something unique. I wanted more than just milk,” she says.
“Each of the goats gives 1 litre on average per day,” she says. Out of the 18 goats, 10 are currently milking while the others are pregnant. This is a purely zero grazing enterprise which means that the goats have to be directly fed because they cannot move out to scavenge for feeds. “We feed them on silage and brewers waste,” she says. Each of the goats is also given at least 20 litres of water per day. To keep away diseases, the goat`s shelter are kept clean.
Deciding to add value
“I decided to start adding value to this milk during the COVID 19 lock down. We had a lot of milk and yet movement was restricted. I had to find a way of improving its shelf life,” she says. Kanyesigye read a lot of value addition on goat`s milk before she decided to involve the services of a professional Chemist.
“I found out that goat`s milk had a lot of other values, many of them medicinal. It is the most nutritional milk after human milk,” she says. She adds that goat`s milk can be used as supplementary feed for malnourished people. “It is a good source of protein, calcium, potassium, phosphorus, magnesium and Vitamin A,” she says.
The formulas were done by a chemist. “We did so many tests until we came up with the best combination. Our soap and lotion has fatty acids that help repair the skin barrier to encourage growth of normal skin,” she says. Other ingredients involved in processing include palm kernel oil, coconut oil, lemon perfume.
More earnings
A litre of fresh milk goes for sh9,000. To process 500 pieces of soap, Kanyes uses 45litres of milk. Each of the pieces goes for sh15,000. This means that Kanyes gets a gross of sh7.5m from 45litres of milk. On the other hand, if she had sold the milk raw, she would have earned about sh400,000. “Of course the other ingredients that I add account for about 30% of the production costs, but still it makes more money to add value to the milk than selling it raw,” she says.
