Assessment of milk safety practices among smallholder dairy farmers in Nyandarua West Sub-County, Kenya

Milk safety practices are the significant aspects in ensuring safety of milk. This is because the consumers only demand the quality products that are safe for their health. These include the practices that farmers need to put into consideration to reduce milk contamination such as cleaning the udder using warm water by wiping and drying it with a clean dry cloth, checking for mastitis using strip cup, using milking salve during milking to stimulate milk letdown, use of aluminium containers for milking and transporting the milk, Cleaning the milking containers regularly, the person milking should wear a clean dust coat, gumboots, mavin, cut hair and fingers short during milking, the milking shade should be thoroughly cleaned by disposing off cow dung, disinfecting the shade against pests using a proper pesticides, filtering the milk using proper ways and a clean sieve or piece of cloth, storing milk in a dry cold room or refrigerators and proper boiling if there is need. Additionally, farmers, should strictly adhere to the waiting period after treating an animal. The milk rejection cases in Nyamarura dairy cooperative has been on the increase. This has decreased the aggregated volume of milk from 1560 litres to 800 litres according to Nyamarura Strategic Plan 2017-2018. The reason for this is not well known. Therefore, research was undertaken to examine milk safety practices that must be implemented efficiently by dairy farmers in order to preserve twith safety and decrease cases of milk rejections at the cooling plant. A structured questionnaire with both open ended and closed ended questions was used as a primary tool to collect data from 138 respondents. Proportional sampling was used to select the dairy farmers in the four sub-counties. It was found out that only 70% of the farmers adopt the milk safety practices which include: use of pots, plastic containers and sufurias for milking and transportating the milk, detect mastitis, filter the milk, store the milk and use milking salve during milking but they were not used in an efficient and effective manner. Hence, it is recommended that trainings,other mentorship programs, coaching and workshops be used to enhance their skills of the farmers. Dairy farmers depend on extension services as the main source of information. The farmers do not depend on other online platforms (WhatsApp, Facebook, twitter, and LinkedIn) to share information. Key words: Awareness, Kenya, mastitis, sources of information