Following a meeting with the Village chief a seed was planted… Rachel (my colleague), Melanie and I were looking into a micro-financing project for people, living on less than $1 per day, in Nyanza (Kenya’s poorest and most HIV/AIDs affected region), to start their own businesses. He advised growing onions, watermelon, keeping chickens and goats, and finally dairy cows…

Kids at the Omen Feeding Centre

Dairy cows produce 10+ litres of milk a day, local Cows in Nyanza produce 1 litre. Dairy cows are not popular here due to high cost and lack of awareness that they produce so much milk. We decided to pilot a dairy cow investment for the Omen feeding centre (they provide daily meals for 75 orphaned kids - free of charge). The Milk will be drunk by the kids and also sold to pay for their food, the main risk is that the cows are not fed and watered well and don’t produce enough milk. Surely this risk was worth it as if the project works we can be sure it should be promoted across the region.

After speaking with 2 schools in the region that kept dairy cows with little effort, we became more encouraged that the project could work, although coming from Suburban London we had to learn cow lingo to understand what people were talking about : ‘serving’ a cow ‘showing heat’ means getting a bull to do the business with a horny cow!

Lending a hand to the construction efforts!

Building the Cow accommodation was next, I sketched a plan – which I thought was pretty good, but after we bought the wood, nails, roof and paid a local fundi (Kenyan odd job person) to build it, the finished version wasn’t similar to the original plan! They didn’t give a reason but probably didn’t want to hurt my feelings in that my plan was rubbish! Then we set off for the rift valley -  4 hours away, here we agreed on 2 healthy cows with good credentials (their mother produced lots of milk).

Cows arriving

The cows arrived last week, christened by their former owners as Melony and Rachel, Kenyan’s sometimes struggle with the name Melanie! Although the second cow didn’t look like the one that we agreed on we were very relieved to finally have the cows. The team at the feeding centre will be taking care of the cows and milking them as soon as their calf’s come, in May and July.

Wish them luck, there is a long way to go but if successful we will try to introduce more dairy cows in this part of Kenya!

Omen Feeding/Dairy Centre Team