Milch cattle poorly fed, milk yield remains low

Moga, Apr 2 : More than 50 per cent of the country's total milk production comes from low milk yielding cows and buffaloes as the milch cattle in the country are either under fed or fed on a diet that is not rich in proteins and other ingredients.

India is the largest milk producing country in the world with a production of 100 million tonnes per year. The country further aims to increase its production to 172 million tonnes by end of 2022 at an annual growth rate of 4 per cent.

Though the country has also the largest population of livestock of cattle and buffalo in the world but both productivity and quality of livestock are no where near the international average.

According to Mahesh Kumar and Amarjit Singh, Punjab Agricultural University (PAU) scientists of the Department of Processing and Food Engineering, the average milk yield in the country is very low in comparison to other other countries as a majority of the cows and buffaloes are poorly fed or are not given a nutritious diet.

Interacting with progressive dairy farmers of the district at Krishi Vigyan Kender at Budh Singh Wala village today, the scientists said the success of livestock farming was largely dependent on the supply of good quality nutritious feeds to cattle.

Feed alone constitutes about 60 to 70 per cent of total cost of production of livestock products.

In India, the farmers generally feed crop residues to cattle and buffaloes with supplementary feeding of broken grains/other products. This type of feed is not always able to meet protein requirements, as a result, animals do not produce milk as per their genetic potential.

Milch animals, according to the scientists, respond better in terms of growth and milk production when they are fed with feed ingredients and other agro-industrial products that are mixed in right proportion. The experts observed that to minimise the gap between requirement and availability of feed resources, there is a need to establish small feed processing units facilities at village level.