Pre Extension Demonstration of Improved Milk Churner at Sidama Region and Gedio Zone SNNPR

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Dairy industry is one of the major industries in Ethiopia which can improve the livelihood of the farmer. Butter making process is the one and the most tedious and time consuming operations in dairy industry especially for small holder farmers. It can be made by churning either cream or soar milk. The research activity carried out support of AGP2 Sidama region in Burisa district and SNNPR in Gedio zone Bule district with objectives of to demonstration and popularization of improved milk churners, to evaluate the efficiency both milk churner in time consuming and better yield and to collect farmers’ preference. From these districts two peasant associations were purposively selected from list of peasant associations based on their potential of dairy production. Then, two groups which have fifteen members in each of women farmers were organized in the selected peasant associations to undertake demonstration and popularization of plastic milk churner. The training was given to farmers, DAs and districts’ dairy experts focusing on how to use the technology, advantages of technology over the traditional ones. A total of 2 FREGs (30 women farmers in two district) member farmers of which around 100% females have been participated on training and demonstration activities. The result reveals that use of plastic milk-churner reduces time of milk churning by half in relative to traditional one i.e. from 60 minutes to 30 minutes, significantly higher quantity of butter (0.39kg/5liter) was obtained from improved churner than traditional clay pot (0.27kg/5liter) and highly reduces work load in women so that, improved milk churner was preferred by two FREG members. Thus, Promotion of this technology should be expanded in other dairy cattle populated areas. Also, sealing of improved milk churner is not tight well, so there was continues dropping of milk, thus sealing part needs further improvement.