Sarah Mwangi’s longevity in the dairy business is more than 15 years. Her livestock farm is situated in Karen, Nairobi.
When starting in 2008, Ms. Mwangi reared two cows purely for domestic purposes. She was a lactating mother then. The cows would provide milk to supplement her baby’s nutrition and the family’s needs.
Little did she know that she would venture into the dairy farming business.
“I had never thought about it because when I was growing up in the village, it was a lot of work, and I didn’t want to be associated with cows,” she said.
The two cows that she started with initially stopped producing milk. Her best alternative was to get two extra cows to have enough for the family.
“The two cows that I started with, we served them and didn’t have milk. I had to buy two more cows to continue getting the milk,” she narrated.
With four cows, they all began to produce milk, creating a shortfall between supply and demand.
“It’s how we got extra milk, and people started asking for it. That’s how the business idea came up,” she said.
Currently, she rears 35 cows in her farming and attributes the dairy farming success to dedication, passion and involvement.
READ: Edna Kaveza: How my small dairy farm makes Sh. 5,000 daily in peak seasons
“You can’t learn about the farm through the phone, you have to be involved to know what the workers are doing, to know your cows and all that,” Sarah said.
Furthermore, Sarah quit her well-paying job, so that she could commit to her business fully after realizing it was her calling. Her side hustle was also more lucrative than her 9 to 5 job.
“By the time I started farming I was in employment, I weighed my options and realized that my farm was paying me better than my employer,” she recalled.
At the moment, Sarah has created job opportunities that have served seven people. Five of them work at the farm while the other two are in different locations growing napier grass and hay.
“Their management is not bad because they have their own supervisor, they report to the supervisor who then reports to me,” she said.