Milk Handling Practices and Physicochemical Properties in North Shewa Zone Central Highlands of Ethiopia

Abstract

The study was conducted in in North Shewa Zone Central Highlands of Ethiopia in two districts.  The average proportion of male respondents in the study area was 61.6%. This shows that males participated more at the field work with grazing of their livestock and play a dominant role in livestock production practices compares to females who spend most of their time at home.  Education is an important entry point for empowerment of their production and productivities of the rural societies. About (72.5%) smallholder micro-enterprises and (38%) smallholder farmers underscored that they knew how to detect milk quality characteristics by using their organoleptic characteristics like odor or smell of fresh milk, changes in thickness as well as abnormal smell and taste might be due to adulterated. The respondents feel that abnormalities can be caused by environment defect like addition of water/flour, removing of fat/cream, barn /cow, feed dust and physiological taints such as hormonal imbalance in genotypes and stage of lactation. Morning milk samples were kept in a refrigerator below 4⁰C and milk sample used for chemical analysis was shacked, before undertaking the required test for chemical composition. As Table 2, illustrates physico-chemical properties of milk samples from project mercy Chacha. There was significant difference in all physico-chemical properties among different breeds of cattle except the freezing point of milk. The study shows that the highest fat (4.09±0.63), TS (12.71±0.44) and conductivity (3.73±0.06) were recorded on Boran breed and, highest protein (3.26±0.13), FP (0.57±0.03), lactose (4.95±0.26), SNF (9.01±0.47), density (29.67±0.34) and salt (0.74±0.04⁾ were recorded on Fogera breed of cow respectively.

Key words: Smallholder, Milk, Physico-chemical, Fat, Breed, Fogera.

DOI: 10.7176/FSQM/126-01

Publication date: February 28^th 2028