Parlour that milks, boils, cools milk at a go

Thomas Letangule inside the milk parlour in his farm in Kabarak, Nakuru County.[Photo:Gardy Chacha/Standard]

Upon leaving a high profile public office, what would you do with your send-off package?

Well, former Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commissioner, Thomas Letangule, decided to invest in dairy farming – among other ventures.

“Of course my intention was to run a successful dairy business. But you should also know I come from a pastoralist community: cattle bear sentimental value for me,” he says.

The former commissioner is more than ecstatic about the dairy farm – erected on 20 acres of land on the outskirts of Kabarak, Nakuru County.

“I have a good team that I am working with. They work hard on the cows. It is not perfect but so far everything is running seamlessly,” he says, smiling.

Things are seamless at Letangule’s farm for one major reason: an ultra-modern milking parlour which he says has automated nearly half of the work output.

Before starting the farm, Letangule delved into research about dairy farming.

He says: “I visited other established farms and asked questions on everything that I needed to know.”

He did not just visit farms in Kenya.

He also travelled to Netherlands on a fact-finding mission on dairy farming. That is how much he wanted to get it right.

It was on that trip to Netherlands – to a town called Gilze – that he came across a prototype of the milking parlour.

“I loved it: I loved the way it was efficient,” he says.

Initially, upon starting the dairy farm, Letangule had only five cows. There wasn’t much milking to be done.

However, the need for a more efficient milking tool arose when Letangule’s herd grew from five, to seven, to ten and now to twenty – all milk producing cows.

The cost of buying and importing the automated milking parlour ran into millions, “something between Sh 3m and Sh 4m,” he says.

Not even the costs would deter him from making sure the machine was delivered at the farm and installed.

“In coming years it will reduce my expenditure and increase efficiency such that the amount I used to buy it will be negligible in comparison,” he says.

Letangule’s farm is only one among few dairy farms that own such a milking parlour.

“We are proud for bringing such a machine into the country,” says Boniface Ledaa, the manager in charge of dairy at the farm.

Apart from increasing efficiency, the automated milking parlour has gotten rid of humans interacting with the milk.

“The first person who will interact with the milk is the consumer,” Letangule says. “This reduces chances of contamination by more than 99 per cent.”

The milking parlour comes in three main parts: milking apparatus, the boiler and the chiller.

Using suction force, vacuum horses with mechanical tips get attached to the cow’s tits, its parts moving in motion to drain the udder.

The milk is automatically sucked into glass-transparent urns, clearly labelled from bottom to top.

“The whole parlour is computerised such that when the udder has been emptied, the vacuum horse automatically disengages from the tits,” Ledaa explains.

Filled urns will then release the milk into the boiler at the push of a button.

“When I push this button the milk will be drained into the boiler. The work of the boiler is to slowly, and progressively, heat the milk up to 80°C,” Ledaa says.

The process, known as pasteurisation, rids the milk of germs that may have found its way into the milk.

“From the boiler, at the push of a button, the milk then moves to the chiller where it is cooled to about 5°C,” he continues. The milk is then pumped into a milk truck and transported to customers,” he says.