Search

Most of the Indian soils are deficient in one or more minerals and these minerals are important in numerous biochemical reactions and deficiency may lead to metabolic diseases resulting lowering production performance in dairy animals. The study attempts to evaluate status nutrient intake in dairy animals, effect of reappropriation of available feed resources and mineral mixture supplementation on production performance in lactating cows and buffaloes in Katesara and Amarpur villages under Farmers’ FIRST project in Palwal district. The animals were in their early lactation (40±5 days in milk) and milk yield, its composition, body weight and body condition score was recorded. Among the cow, 28% deficit, 35% excess dry matter; 41% deficit and 11% excess crude protein; 33% deficit and 25% excess total digestible nutrients (TDN) was provided. In buffaloes, 36% deficit and 40% excess DM; 45% deficit and 15% excess CP; 25% deficit and 12% excess TDN was provided. Reappropriation of DM, CP and TDN was done using available feed/ fodders available to the farmers and after 15 days, mineral mixture was provided @ 50 g/d for 60 days. The production performance record reveals no change in body weight but BCS was improved. Milk yield, fat, protein in cows were improved and other composition were remain unchanged. In buffaloes, milk yield, fat and protein improved while others, viz. lactose, SNF, ash and TS were similar due to supplementation of mineral mixture. The results conclude that imbalance of nutrients existed to the tune of 10 to 45% among various nutrients. One of the best propositions could be supplementation of mineral mixture to improve milk yield (10 to 14%) and fat per cent under field condition in both cows and buffaloes.

Major concern of today’s agriculture and allied sector is to tumble wastage and increase farmers’ income. Post harvest operation and value addition of the farm products is one important way to attain this goal. Even if Indian dairy sector has a well renowned position in the world milk market in terms of production, processing and value addition percentage at the farmer level is not in a recognisable stage. Marketing channels, marketing efficiency and price spread of the identified marketing channels among milk producers and milk processors have been analysed here. Comparative study of the producers share in consumer’s rupee of value added milk products and liquid milk showed a significant difference. It was more than 96% in processing of milk and nearly 85% in raw milk. Marketing efficiency analysis showed that channel I (Producer –Consumer) was the most efficient in both group. Price of value added food (Mean Ranks of Friedman’s test is 9.10) was the most important factor which attracts the milk processors to take value addition and post harvest management decisions. Infrastructure related constraints (Mean Rank of Kruskal-Wallis test 28.70) were the major constraint faced by the dairy processors. Under that lack of power and electricity and non-availability of machineries in local places (Mean Ranks of Friedman’s test is 7.70) were identified as the major constraints in the study area. As per the milk producers, technical inhibiting factors (Mean Rank of Kruskal-Wallis test 40.25) prevent them from undertaking the post harvest operations and value addition in raw milk.