Samson and Kidus Belayneh, 12 and nine years old of Biret Dildy, in Yeka district, were out looking for milk on a Wednesday afternoon right after school. They were sent out to buy milk by their aunt for their one-year-old cousin.

They scoured the neighborhood and returned home empty handed, an experience shared by many in the city these days. Addis Abeba has been hit by a shortage of milk since the end of Abiy Tsome, the Orthodox Christians’ fasting season. The fasting season was followed by Ramadan, the Muslim fasting month, which meant the shortage has persisted since at least April 28.

In one of the branches of Shoa Supermarket found on Africa Avenue, there were no local milk packages available for sale, just imported milk. The local milk ran out as quickly as it arrived on the shelves.

The shortages have also meant a spike in prices from around 14 or 15 Br a half litre to as high as 18 Br now.

“We are not getting even the 50lt or 60lt of milk we received before the fasting season,” says Enat Abera, owner of Enat Milk, a dairy shop around Sidist Kilo on King George VI Street. She adds that the fasting season coincides with the dry months of spring, a period that usually reduces the amount of available pasture for the cows.

Kebede Amede, general manager of one of the oldest dairy companies in the country, Lame Dairy Plc, which produces Shola Pasteurised Milk, agrees. Demand has always been much bigger than supply, the shortage is just more apparent during this season, according to him.

“The ever-growing population of the city, as well as the low productivity of local breed cows, have been compounding factors,” said Kebede.

This is despite Ethiopia having one of the highest cattle populations in Africa, estimated to be around 58 million. A fifth of these are dairy cows, almost all of which are indigenous breeds that can produce 1.5lt of milk a day on average compared to cross-breeds that can produce up to 10lt a day. Ethiopia was able to produce 4.1 billion litres of milk last fiscal year, while Kenya stood at five billion litres, a country with lower cattle and human populations.

Despite their large numbers, getting these cows to produce in the dry season that may extend between December and June is difficult, as the available pasture decreases. Instead, farmers turn to chaff, or Furushka, which is made either from wheat, rice or sorghum or a combination of these.

“Even during the rainy season when there is plenty of grass for the cows, I have to provide them with some amount of Furushka, so that they can give a better quantity and quality of milk,” says Alemitu Assefa, 60, a dairy farmer around Biret Dildy. “But the price of the chaff has constantly been rising, and it is getting harder for me to keep up with it.”

Alemitu has four indigenous cows that can produce milk. As a result of the shortage of fodder combined with the genome of her cows, she gets only five litres of milk on a good day. She then sells the milk to customers who live in her neighborhood on a monthly contract at a price of 30 Br a litre.

If the cows are able to produce more milk than what she sells, Alemitu gives the excess to her grandchildren.

Although cross-bred cows produce a greater volume of milk, they should not be completely endorsed as the quality of their produce is inferior to the indigenous ones, according to Mohammed Aman, an Assistant Professor of Agricultural Economics & Agri-Business at Haramaya University for more than a decade. Cross-bred cows require more feed and are more susceptible to diseases, he adds.

“We need to keep the pure genome of the indigenous breed in a gene bank, because at some point we might lose the original gene of the local cows,” he warned. “This is important, because the indigenous ones have their own quality that we need to preserve in case of an emergency like widespread disease.”