Reasons For Dairy Farming Failure:
The following information is about “Reasons For Dairy Farming Failure”.
Introduction to Dairy Farm Business
There are hundreds of dairy farms opened on a regular basis with modern equipment, design, and quality breed of animals, but most of them become non-functional due to various reasons. The reasons for the failure of a dairy farm business are described below:
- When dairy farms are started by people with not much knowledge about the dairy farming practices, then having a farm with highly excellent facilities is considered useless. It is always important to have some basic understanding of the business before investing money into it.
- Most people start a dairy farming business for the purpose of money-making and tend to forget the fact that they deal with live animals and not with machines. This process of raising animals should be done with passion and not with the intention of commercial benefit.
- Another major drawback was implementing the big bang formula, i.e. constructing a big farm with a huge number of animals is not advisable during the farm establishment stage. One should always start with a small shed with fewer cattle and slowly expand the business. Setting up a milk processing unit even when there is not much production of milk would result in loss.
- Farmers mostly do not understand the reproductive cycle of the animals within the farm and depend greatly on the artificial insemination methods as advised by the local veterinary doctor, which leads to missing heat cycles. This causes feeding animals for almost 9 to 10 months during the non-milking period.
- Farmers also face failure in the dairy business because they do not take proper care of the calves. The female calves on the farm should be treated properly with utmost care so that they start producing good quality milk in 3 to 4 years’ time.
- The farmers basically do not understand the feed management principle; they generally cut down the feed drastically during non-milking days such that the animal reduces to half of its size. The recommended rule for feeding is to feed the animals with Dhana, and fodder during the milking phase and reduce the feed very little during the non-milking phase. This feed supply and reduction should always be done according to the body weight and yield of the animal.
- Fully automating the farm is also a difficult task in the beginning because the animals need to adjust to the milking machines. The animals adapt to the new machinery very slowly and this needs time and patience. If the farmer discards the use of the machinery because it did not work in the beginning or initial stages then it would incur a loss.
- The owners of the dairy farm should always have a watch on the business and the animals and should probably never depend on others to look after the farm. Other people without knowledge of the farm practices will not be able to take care of the dairy farm in an efficient way.
- People shut down their farms when things do not go very well during the initial stages, but the dairy farming business needs a lot of willpower and patience to deal with the circumstances. Sticking on to the farm for some time would definitely make it successful and start bringing in profits.
Malpractices of dairy farmers
Introduction
- India is considered to be the largest producer of milk in the world, but most of the milk is contaminated due to the malpractices adopted by the supply chain. The primary product for profit is milk and the main motive of the dairy business is to earn great profit by selling the milk at the best price. If middlemen are involved in the dairy business, then the return would be lower. So it is always advisable to avoid middlemen for selling milk. The location of dairy farms away from the city area is the main reason for dependence on processing centers and milk collection units. Milk brought to the dairy processing centers can be adulterated in various ways such as:
Mixing water in the milk
- When milk is transferred from the production unit to the chilling center, almost 2% of the milk is transferred into a new container and is replaced with water. The new container with 2% milk is assigned a new dummy customer number. This procedure is repeated for all the routes in the collection center. The above scenario depicts that if a dairy farm produces 100 liters of milk each day, then it probably loses 2 liters of milk per day, which amounts to 200 liters per month and incurs a loss of Rs 7000 a month.
Fat percentage reduction
- The price of milk is fixed based on the fat content present in it. At the collection center, the fat percentage is reduced by 0.1 to 0.5%. If the fat %is reduced by 0.2%, then there would be a loss of Rs 1 per liter, i.e. a loss of Rs 100 is incurred each day.
Altering the density of milk
- Most of the milk collecting centers measure milk in liters, but practically collected milk cannot be measured in liters and therefore a liter measuring scale is used. The weight is converted to volume based on the density of the substance. It should be clearly understood that one liter of milk is entirely different from one liter of cooking oil because the density of both liquids is different. The density of cow milk and buffalo milk within the same dairy farm is also considered to be different. The approximate loss incurred every month by the farmer is about Rs 1500.
- The above-mentioned malpractices or adulteration can be overcome by setting up a milk analyzer and a weighing machine. The purpose of the milk analyzer is to determine the fat%, SNF%, and density of milk. By purchasing and using this equipment a person investing Rs 45,000 can save Rs 5000 –Rs 10,000 each month.
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