With its udder almost touching the ground, walking in calculated steps like in a beauty contest, a dairy cow moves around a shed.
Slowly, it moves and stands at a feeding bay full of hay mixed with green grass, and starts to feed before it is led to a milking shed.
It is some minutes to 1pm, and this is the second time a handler is milking the Ayrshire cow that produces an average of 30 litres of milk a day.
In the edges of Maralal town, at Loikas village in Samburu county, is the home of Francis Kahiga, 30.
The home is gradually becoming an attraction to youthful up and coming dairy farmers in the region.
We find Kahiga mixing hay and molasses. Another young man is attending to one of the five dairy cows.
HOW HE STARTED
“I bought milk daily for two years and realised I was using huge amounts of money. This made me think of starting dairy farming to meet my family's demand for milk,” Kahiga said.
For the two years, he was buying milk from local dairy farmers. He realised the demand was too high, as most residents are pastoralists who do not produce enough milk.
Further, Kahiga noted that Maralal town mostly consists of non-locals who have settled in small plots around the town, or tenants who depend on external suppliers for milk.
"Most people living here do not keep dairy livestock due to lack of enough farming space. Those who have settled within the town live in plots too small to accommodate anything else apart from a house," he said.
Kahiga, an accountant, says he was lucky to get a 200 by 100 plot, where he has put up a modern house and five dairy cows.
On the small plot, Kahiga also keeps chicken, ducks and goats. He also plants different kinds of vegetables.
However, the dairy farm is where his heart lives, as this is his major cash plant.
"I started this in 2016 with one cow, which cost Sh97,000. The money was part of a Sh120,000 loan I borrowed from one of the saccos in town," he said.
Together with some little money his wife had saved, he used the remaining part of the loan to construct a modern cowshed and buy feeds.
Francis Kahiga, feeds his cows in a modern zero grazing cowshed.
MILK PRODUCTION
He said the cow was producing 25 litres of milk daily, and his family was using 2 litres a day.
"I started selling milk immediately and the returns were high, the demand was overwhelming as well," he said.
After repaying the loan in less than eight months, he took another loan of a similar amount and added to his herd another dairy cow after a year.
The zero-grazing cowshed consists of a milking cage, a feeding trough and a sleeping cage.
In the sleeping cage there is a rubber carpet popularly known as a 'cow mattress'.
The cowsheds are cleaned daily to avoid contraction and spreading of livestock diseases caused by poor hygiene.
So far, Kahiga has five dairy cows, two of which are in calf. He gets 100 litres daily from all his stock, which he says will rise after the two give birth.
The young, aggressive dairy farmer sells the milk at Sh70 a litre, making roughly Sh7,000 a day from selling milk to residents.
His farmhand, Jonathan Nyangweso, says they feed the cows once a day. The cows are milked thrice a day.
"We feed them heavily. At 5am, I give each a 17kg bucket of silage. As I milk at noon, I give them a handful of hay. And in the evening after milking, I give them a handful of green fodder," he said.
Kahiga has planted grazing grass in a farm in Nanyuki, from which he makes hay for his livestock.
He mixes the grass with potato peelings, green maize plants and molasses, and stores the mix in pits to make silage before feeding the cows.
He has constructed a huge tank within the farm and dug a sizeable pit to store the silage.
Kahiga says he also gives his livestock concentrates like fishmeal, sunflower and dairy meal to see they get a balanced diet for more production.
He has named each of his animals according to the time and season he got them.
"It helps in record keeping, breeding and vaccination," he said.
Kahiga's efforts were handsomely rewarded when he sold two heifers at Sh90,000 each.
The dairy farmer receives about 20 youth a week, who visit him for lessons. He does not charge them as he says he would love to see Samburu youth moving from the traditional pastoral livestock farming to modern zero grazing dairy farming.
This, he says, would greatly reduce cases of illiteracy and vices that come with lack of education, like cattle rustling.
The dairy farmer says he regularly visits established dairy farms to add his farming skills.
He has visited Wambugu farm in Nyeri and Ziara farm in Kirinyaga, where he has learnt more dairy keeping secrets.
He notes that there is huge demand for milk in Maralal town and the surrounding settlements.
"I get orders daily, I'm not even able to satisfy my customers' demand. What I’m saying is that dairy farmers in this town are not meeting the market demand," he said.
Mercy Kaviri prepares a meal in her kitchen using biogas produced at their dairy farm /MARTIN RWAMBA
PROBLEMS AND BENEFITS
Kahiga faces several problems in his money-minting venture. There are no artificial insemination services in the whole of Samburu county. This makes him source for a veterinary officer all the way from Karatina.
The county’s Livestock department, he said, should employ extension officers to be going round training youth interested in dairy farming.
A year into dairy farming, Kahiga invested in biogas production to cut domestic costs. His wife Mercy Kaviri, 27, says she has been using biogas in all her cooking for two years.
She says biogas has no risk of exploding in case one forgets to switch off the cooker, and does not emit any foul smell, as many would think.
Kaviri said she used to spend Sh2,000 a month in cooking gas, money she has now been saving.
"I've managed to do other things with the money I used to refill cooking gas. I know by now I've been able to spend close to Sh100,000 in other things," she said.
As I left Kahiga's home, I was served a glass of warm milk and a piece of arrowroot.
"This was boiled using biogas. Maize and beans is also boiling as we speak. I don't have to mind running out of cooking gas. It has made me more attractive to my husband, as I don't keep on asking for the money he makes selling milk," Kaviri said as she saw me out.