Sitting near Unyama, on the outskirts of Gulu City, this is one of the best managed dairy farms in the country at least if one goes with comments from those who have visited it.

The cattle graze in modern cattle shelters, fabricated with stainless bars.

The farm is largely mechanized with several multi-use tractors parked under a shade near the cattle house.

Silage bunkers are also visibly full of feeds. Not far away from the main house, a distribution van is moving out-taking packed milk and yoghurt to customers in Gulu town.

This farm is owned by Dr Tonny Kidega, a 40-year-old veterinary officer.

Kidega is the overall winner of the 2015 Vision Group best farmer’s competition.  

Kidega is the director of Gulu Country Dairy Farm (GCDF) established a mini dairy processing plant worth about shs220m, after returning from a learning tour of the Netherlands in 2016.

Best farmers competition is an annual project that is sponsored by KLM airlines, Dutch Embassy, Vision Group Uganda and DFCU bank and Koudjis Nutrition BV.

 “I went to the Netherlands with a very open heart, brain and body. I wanted to see and learn and indeed when I came back, I started implementing what I saw,” he says.

He says that he realized that dairy farmers in the Netherlands add value to their products and then earn more money.

“They told us that there are over 100 products from milk. The easiest of these was of course processing and packing the milk, rather than selling it raw, plus processing yoghurt, ghee and cheese,” he recalls.

At the moment, Kidega packs the milk and produces yoghurt.  Recently, he has also introduced coffee farming.

Looking for support

“I had my big dream of adding value to my milk, but I did not have the money to turn it into a reality,” he says.

Luckily, he acquired the grant from Partners World Wide Incorporated a USA NGO.

From the grant, sh200m was spent on acquiring the Israeli made diary machine and sh20m for a cold transportation van.

The processing plant that started in 2018 is now producing yoghurt, in cups of 150mls and pasteurized milk packed in 500mls. All the products are flavored with strawberry.

Improved earnings

There is no doubt that value addition improves earnings.

Kidega says that compared to when he was selling his milk raw at sh1,700 a litre, he can now process  6.5 cups of yoghurt from the same litre, of which each is being sold at sh1000.

“There is absolutely a very big difference in selling raw milk and processed yoghurt. And my focus is to produce more of these than selling raw milk,” he says.

Packed milk goes at sh2,800 a litre, compared to sh1,800 before the processing started.

The farm has over 70 cows, with at least 30 milkings at any one point. 

With each producing an average of 25 litres in a day, overall daily milk collection is about 700 litres. Processing is done every after two days.

At the moment, 400 litres are used per day in production of which they make over 2,000 cups of yoghurt and 150 packets of pasteurized milk.

The machine has the capacity to produce 1,000 litres of milk per hour.

 “We decided to package our yoghurt in small quantity to easily tap into the young people who don’t have a lot of money. They can afford sh1000 to purchase a cup,” he says.

The products are being sold in Gulu, Kitgum, Pader, Nwoya and Amuru districts with mostly orphanage centres buying the milk in huge quantity.

Kidega however notes that as a farm, they have a high demand for both products which cannot be met at the moment.

“I learnt from the Netherlands that it is not about having a larger number of cows on a farm. We are also planning to improve the ones we have where at least each can produce a minimum of 40 litres a day,” he added. 

The farm is also adding more products like cheese, ice cream and butter as the quantity of milk increases.