Bomet Deputy Governor Dr. Hillary Barchok on 4th July 2019 flagged off 5 milk coolers in Bomet stadium.

The 2,000 and 3,000-litre capacity coolers will be distributed to 5 different milk cooperatives within the county namely; Chepkalwal, Longisa, Balek, Kiptulwa and Kokiche.

The Agriculture Department had earlier on received 3 other coolers making a total of 8 under the Small Holder Dairy Commercialization Programme (SDCP) – a collaboration between the county government and IFAD/GOK.

During the flagging off, Dr Barchok noted that the county government has rolled out the subsidized artificial insemination (AI) programme for dairy cows and urged farmers to rear modern dairy cow breeds in a bid to achieve maximum milk production.

“These coolers will assist local farmers to store and preserve their milk as they negotiate on the favourable milk prices through respective cooperative societies” said Dr Barchok

The Deputy Governor thanked the good governance of Her Excellency the Governor Dr. Joyce Laboso that has seen value addition in milk products through the equipment of the dairy sector with machinery and adequate funding.

On his part, Agriculture CECM, Mr. Julius Tuei, thanked the SDCP saying that “We have plans to pool all our milk in the county and to look for a market for the milk and do value addition.”

Bomet County records a total production of 397,000 litres of milk daily with dairy farmers selling their produce to processors including Kenya Co-operative Creameries, Kabianga Dairies, Highlands, Brookside and Daima dairies among others.

In its effort to rebrand itself as the dairy county, the county government of Bomet has set an annual target of 200 million litres of milk production.