Shankar Adhikari of Vijayanagar, Bharatpur Metropolitan City-16, has been raising cows for a long time. He used to sell up to 32 liters of milk daily, morning and evening, from his two cows.

Recently, his milk production has decreased. As production has decreased, the cost is increasing. Now that he is producing only 23 liters of milk per day, Adhikari, who was worried, has enthusiastically participated in the training provided by the Chitwan District Milk Producers Cooperative Association to reduce the cost of milk production. 

Adhikari said that he started learning a lot on the first day of the two-day training that began at the assembly hall of Vijay Milk Producers Cooperative Association Limited. ‘We used to feed a lot of water, cook the milk in a pot, and feed bran, but we learned from the training that we should not do that,’ said the farmer Adhikari, ‘If we feed a lot of other things, the cost increases, the production decreases, and we learned that we should focus on feeding grass.’ Ramchandra Dawadi, who has been rearing cows for 4 years, also said that he learned a lot from the training.  

The Chitwan District Milk Producers Cooperative Association has started training leading dairy farmers of Chitwan to reduce the cost of milk production by going to their places. Chitwan District Dairy Producers Cooperative Association President Kishor Bagale informed that training has been started for leading farmers on climate-friendly good animal husbandry practices and management. ‘We have started training across the district to make it easier for farmers as the cost of milk production has increased due to unnecessary feeding, and this will help reduce costs,’ he said.  

A two-day training has been started from Thursday at the assembly hall of Vijaya Cooperative in Vijayanagar, Bharatpur Metropolitan City-16 with the financial support of Heifer Nepal Lalitpur. Kalyan Adhikari, Secretary of Chitwan District Dairy Producers Cooperative Association and President of Vijaya Cooperative, informed that this training is being provided to 35 leading farmers out of a total of 200 farmers in Vijayanagar. ‘We have now trained leading farmers, our goal is to produce trainers from this,’ said the official. 

Bandhuraj Adhikari, Technician of Mangalpur Service Center, Animal Service Office under Bharatpur Metropolitan City, and Veterinarian Rachit Devkota are training the farmers. Earlier, training to reduce the cost of milk has been conducted targeting farmers in Rapti and Khairhani municipalities. Preparations are underway to continue the training in other cooperative organizations in the district. 

The cost of milk production is determined based on the feed fed to cows and buffaloes. Some have more and some have less cost. Adhikari, the chairman of the dairy cooperative, who has been raising 29 cows, said that he can calculate the cost price based on the feed. ‘Everyone’s cost price may be different, my cost price for producing one liter of milk is Rs 49,’ said Adhikari.