Better Cows for Better Environment

Do you have time and space to plant 15,000 trees?

Of course it is a tough task! But if you can increase milk yield per cow by 5 liters, for every 150 cows, the environmental impact of this 'd be same as planting 15 thousand trees. To increase profits, for a better environment and to feed the ever increasing Indian and world population, we have to come up with better cows.

Genetics here probably is the first and foremost player here. Especially in India, there is a thinking that the high producing cows are less fertile. This may be the case somewhere but is not necessarily true. Fertility has many key determinants like proper management and nutrition as well. Bulls should be selected on the basis where data is available for daughters' fertility and immunity also.

Apart from genetics, management plays a key role in keeping up the production upto the genetic potential. Milk production increase or decrease is dependent 55-60% on management factors and 40-45% on dietary factors. Recently attending a seminar, I came across one presentation where two herd with similar genetics, diets and environment were compared. One herd had an avg. production of 6000 lts. per lactation whereas the second herd had an avg. of 12000 lts. per lactation and the whole difference was management only. The second herd had immaculate disease recognition programmes, proper milking protocols etc. This was all that made such a big difference.

Producing more milk from less number of cows always has its advantages like less space requirements for less no. of cows, lesser maintenance requirements and less environmental pollution!!!!