Studies on Management of Dairy Buffaloes in Rural Areas of District Meerut (U.P.)

Abstract

India has a great heritage of bovine keeping. Bovine availability in the country was due to her intrinsic importance in supplying milk, manure and motive force for the country's agricultural economy. The present study was conducted to management practices of buffaloes in 4 Block, 8 villages and total 190 respondents 38 households, in Meerut District (Western U.P.). The total daily milk yield per households almost increased with the increase in herd size. While milk product remains almost constant with the farm size. The overall average daily returns from per milch animal from milk, milk production and dung production were Rs. 8.69, Rs. 1.88 and Rs. 0.8654, respectively. Gross income, net income per animal per year as well as net income per Rs. 1283.547 investment increased with the land holding and herd size from landless to large farmers except marginal farmers which might be due to the fact that qualitative fodder· and feeds, comfortable houses. The infrastructural facilities of the farm and agricultural by- product could be effectively utilized for milk production by this category of households. The average input- output ratios were found to be 1:2.30, 1:1.30, 1:1 .32, 2:2.30 and 1:1 .85, in the landless to large farmers categories, respectively. The values of regression coefficient of fodder cost (x1) were positive and highly significant (P > 0.01) for all the categories of farmers except medium category .The regression coefficient of mineral mixture (x3) was positive and statically significant for medium farmers. In case of large farmers, labour cost were found to be positive and significant indicating there by the importance of better management by employing more manpower in increasing the net return from dairy enterprise. The overall regression coefficient of herd size (Xg) was positive and found highly significant for medium and large farmers. This indicated that most of the farmers in the study area had the herd size below the optimum size. There is a scope for increasing the milch animals to enhance their net income. The explanatory variabies together explained above 94 percent of total variation in net income for overall sample households. It was conceded from the variation that remaining differences were contributed by other managemental factors and dry days, lactation length, etc. of milch animal.