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

¹Mebrate Getabalew, ²Tewodros Alemneh and ²Getahun Asafaw

¹Holland Dairy Private Limited Company, Milk Collection Point Coordinator, Debre Zeit, Ethiopia

²Woreta Town Office of Agriculture and Environmental Protection, Woreta, South Gondar Zone, Ethiopia

Corresponding Author Email: [email protected]; Tel. 251920499820.

Accepted 24^th July, 2024.

Abstract

The study was conducted in two districts of North Shewa Zone, Central Highlands of Ethiopia with the objectives: to access milk handling practices and to examine physicochemical composition of milk. For this study, a total of 159 questionnaires were collected from smallholder dairy farms. Out of the total 159 questionnaire respondents, the average proportion of male respondents was 61.6% (98) in the study area. 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 and changes in thickness as well as abnormal smell and taste. 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 samples used for chemical analysis were shacked, before undertaking the required test for chemical composition. There was significant difference (p<0.05) in all physicochemical properties among different breeds of cattle except the freezing point of milk. The study shows that the highest fat (4.09±0.63), total solid (TS) (12.71±0.44) and conductivity (3.73±0.06) were recorded on Boran breed and, highest protein (3.26±0.13), freezing point (FP) (0.57±0.03), lactose (4.95±0.26), solid non-fat (SNF) (9.01±0.47), density (29.67±0.34) and salt (0.74±0.04⁾ were recorded on Fogera breed cows, respectively. In general, the overall mean value of the fat (3.93%) in the study sites was higher than the Ethiopian standard value of 3.50%.