Guo said he planned to buy more cows, as the milk price had rebounded to the pre-melamine scandal levels in November.

Small farmers benefit from keeping their cows at the big farms, where the cows are healthy and therefore the milk is better quality.

However, the transformation of Xingtang's diary industry is forcing many farmers to quit dairy farming.

If the new dairy farms are not close to the smaller farmers' homes then they may feel it is too time-consuming to commute everyday, said Lu Shuping.

"I used to keep two dairy cows besides doing other kinds of farming. But it is not convenient for us to raise cows in the new farms. I sold them to the big dairy farmers since I don't plan to invest more in dairy cows," said a Xingtang farmer called Zhang Ying.

The melamine crisis brought changes in many ways. It also made survial of small dairy farms difficult.

"I sold two of my eight milk cows after the melamine scandal last year. I did not know what to do with the 250 kg of milk produced every day, as nobody purchased raw milk," said Guo Shuan.

Lu Shuping, an official with Xingtang County Animal Husbandy Bureau, said the number of milking cows in the county has dropped by 25,000 from 97,000 in October 2008, as farmers either killed or sold cows, mainly old ones that produced less milk.

Hebei Province now has 1.6 million milk cows, 70,000 less than the same period last year. But the number of livestock has kept increasing since April.

The Chinese dairy industry is recovering after the melamine scandal, said Wang Yansheng, a Hebei Provincial Dairy Association official. Dairy farmers and producers have learned a hard lesson, which in some ways has helped improve the quality of milk, he said.

China's dairy output amounted to 14.23 million tons in the first three quarters of this year, up 3.42 percent year-on-year.