ASSESSMENT OF DAIRY CATTLE MANAGEMENT PRACTICES AND EVALUATION OF CHEMICAL COMPOSITION IN GURAGE ZONE, CENTRAL ALEMITU SIMACHEW ABATE SCHOOL OF GRADUATE STUDIES DAIRY CATTLE MANAGEMENT PRACTICES AND EVALUATION OF THEIR MILK MICROBIAL QUALITY AND CHEMICAL COMPOSITION IN GURAGE ZONE, CENTRAL ETHIOPIA

Abstract

Milk provides essential nutrients and is an important source of dietary energy, high quality proteins and fats, but it is an excellent medium for growth of many kinds of microorganisms under suitable conditions. A cross sectional study was conducted to assess dairy cattle management practice and evaluate chemical composition and microbial quality of raw cow milk in a selected district of Gurage zone, Central Ethiopia region. Two districts were purposely selected based on their dairy cattle potential. Then the districts were stratified in to highland and midland agro-ecologies. For the survey part, data were collected using semi-structured questionnaires from a total of 373 respondents that were randomly selected based on proportionality from each kebele of the two study districts. Beside, a total of 80 milk samples were collected from the udder of the animal and storage container for microbial quality and chemical composition analysis. The current study showed that, 35.4% of the respondent in the study area were practicing natural pasture as feed source and common house with humans (91.2%). The study also revealed that, the majority of the respondents milking their cows in a barn, Washing their hands before milking, but, they are not Washing the udder before milking which was 63.5%, 83.1%, and 72.1% respectively. In addition, the majority of respondents were not practicing cleaning milk equipment, milking near the barn area and udders washing. The overall mean value of fat, protein and ash content of the milk in the study area were 4.12 ± 0.14, 3.35 ± 0.06 and 0.62 ± 0.01% respectively. Significant difference (P<0.05) were noted the fat and ash percentage in the milk collected from highland and midland agro ecology. The overall mean of total bacterial counts and coliform counts were 6.48 ± 0.15 and 4.98 ± 0.10 log cfu/ml respectively. Both total bacterial counts and coliform counts showed significant differences between milk collected from udder and storage containers (P<0.05). However, significant differences were not observed on coliform count among the different agro ecology. In general,- the result indicated that milk collected from the two districts were poor in bacteriological quality and did not meet the international milk quality standard, whereas the chemical composition was adequate about depend on Ethiopia standared level. Therefore, adequate sanitary measures and hygienic practice should be taken at all stages from washing hands before milking to storage containers of the producer.