Five Tips To Successful Dairy Farming
The story of Mr. Murimi
Three years ago I met a new friend Murimi a year-old businessman who had decided to retire after a long illustrious business carrier as an animal feeds processor. He had made money, built a state of the art retirement home in a posh neighborhood, and rented out his manufacturing firm to a long term investor for a huge sum of money.
In his hands he had twenty million, which he decided to invest in a quiet retirement scheme; Farming. He went back to his ancestral farm a few kilometers away, and after sketchy research settled on dairy and pig production. And investing he did. Fencing off the farm, clearing, establishing a twenty cows stall unit, a two hundred pigs piggery, farm office fully fitted. It was an amazing ideal Enterprise that I and everyone would savor. A few months down the line I took a farmer to Murimi's farm to purchase a few pig breeders and I couldn't help but fall in love with the radiance. The success was just photographic.
Fast forward to last week when I went back, the state of the art model farm was a dilapidated ghost of a parch with the once whitewashed structure now reeling under the weight of disrepair, creating a picture of a miscarried dream.
The man himself, the farmer was worse, his teary bloodshot eyes depicted a man whose end was coming before time, and when he talked he fidgeted and spit non nonchalantly. The once strong frame now appears shaken as if on a forced rear drive into the past.
He was ordering a few farm hands here and there when we arrived, after which he quickly ushered us into a quick embarrassed tour around the farm. He had recently turned into cucumber farming and the project only emphasized the bad state of affairs in Mr. Murimi's farm.
"You see these cows the only thing I want from them is manure" he quickly said when we were at what used to be the dairy section, now a clicky structure, housing three equally rickety cow than are now producing a total of twenty liters per day.
I swallowed hard when we went to the piggery unit on seeing a mature sow with it's a litter of six piglets that all mite-infested, and you could easily count the bones. They were suffering from acute starvation.
When we finally sat down for a cup of tea, my friend just unceremoniously announced, " Mwalimu, dairy farming can never make you money, with the current market trends in the country." And then we drifted into the local politics and current affairs.
Sometimes, a man is best left alone, to bear his pain.
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