A farmer is giving out free ‘magic tree seeds’ that have helped Kiambu dairy farmers reduce the amount of dairy meal they use by half while increasing the daily amount of milk they produce by eight liters.
Ken Mithamo, a dairy farmer in Kahawa Wendani, replaced a kilo of the two kgs of dairy meal he feeds his cows daily with the leaves from Leucaena or Mlusina in Swahili, a tree that produces thousands of hard shiny brown seeds that grow into a living fence that is high in protein.
The young farmer who keeps five high-producing Friesian dairy cattle previously only relied on store-bought feeds for most of his protein and energy needs. “We used to give our cows the recommended kilogram of dairy meal for every two liters of milk they produced above the first five liters. This we were taught is meant to challenge feed the cow spurring it to produce even more milk. Unfortunately what feed makers taught us did not translate to more milk, we were spending our way out of business,” he said.
The frustrated farmers who are part of a cooperative that delivers their milk to Brookside Dairy sent the dairy meal they were feeding their cattle to KALRO for nutrient testing in 2018. In a couple of days, they had an answer as to why the milk output from their cows was not matching pace with the dairy meal they gave their cows. “We found out that what we thought was a quality dairy meal had maize cobs and ground macadamia husks in it. The crude protein content in the dairy meal was also far lower than the 18 percent advertised,” Mithamo said.
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They went online fishing for alternatives to store-bought dairy meals and came across Leucaena. The ancient fast-growing and drought-tolerant evergreen tree shrub that is also known as wild/ river tamarind has 20-30 per cent of highly digestible protein that can be used to provide dairy cows with most of their protein needs.
Leucaena which is often mistaken for its cousin calliandra– another tree legume that is used as livestock fodder matures quickly taking just a month and a half to grow to a 30 cm seedling. This means it can be an invasive weed if it is not cut and fed to animals.
While it grows best in regions with 650 to 3,000 mm of rain and between 25°C to 30°C temperatures they are recommended by FAO as drought-tolerant fodder because they are drought tolerant. They’re capable of surviving for six to seven months of continuous drought and when receiving as little as 300mm of rain.
One hectare of Leucaena produces three to 30 tonnes of dry leaves and stems.
Ken trims around 10 kilograms of the magic crop every day that he grows as a two-meter-long fence on his farm. This he mixes with a kilo of unga dairy meal, hay from rice straw hay or Rhodes grass if available, Napier, maize silage, soya, fish meal, and Lucerne to make a rich feed that has seen his milk output rocket from 10 to 12 liters to more than 20 liters.
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“At first, the cooperative we deliver milk to was convinced we were adding water to our milk. We invited them to our farms to see the transformative impact of Lucerne and they’ve evangelised the message. Today you will be hard-pressed to find a dairy farm in Kahawa that isn’t growing the magic tree,” he said.
Photo Courtesy: Krish Dulal