Livestock as alternate and sustainable energy source in India

We have 21% Bullock  and 9% Buffalo bulls  ploughing  100 million hectares of land mostly in rain fed  arears of Indian.They move 1.4 millions carts, herby saving 120 billion rupees and  preventing toxic effulent emissions through non use of fossil fuel’.

Animal Draught power and envirnment

 Our 83 million draught animals

They contribute 30,000 mw ENERGY at when energy crisis is overwhehilming the whole world .All the wars now are centered on the energy grabing politics .

 The work of 15 million tractors is being done by our bullocks.It saves us billions of foreign exchange .

The 7o million tons of cow dung used as fuel saves us 27 MT of kerosene and 68 MT of wood. Imagine so much of wood shall denude our 22% FORESTS AT A MUCH FASTER ARTE THAN EXPECTED. Our hill canopy was saved by planting orchards and other fruit and non fruit bearing plants. Likewise the environmental determents shall be replaced by recycling of the dung urine and the energy produced through bullock power.Surprisingly,even good % OF THE COWS is also used for ploughing.

? What should be our strategy

Set goals as per Our resource base ie Location specific strategy  .

We have 29 breeds of cattle .Few (5 ) breeds are milk ones  like the Gir (2-6 thousand  KGS /LAC),sahiwal 2-4 thousand kgs/lac,Red sindhi 2-4 thousand kgs and Tharparkar with 1.8-3.5 thousand  kegs /lact .The fat % ranges from 4-4.5%.The majority of them are heat and disease resistant. A cross bred cows averages slightly higher than 3000-6000 Litres per lactation but fat % varies around 3.5. If the milk is priced on per kg fat the margin of profits between these indigenous cows and the exotic cross breds shall not be much.The pressure on the environment and land is also less as these locals thrive on agricultural waste and need low expenditures.The intensive maize silage or green fodder in summer shall relieve pressure on water and land resources.If competitive cost of production and the sale value is the measure of comparison then differences may not be much. Even in the commercialized dairy farms of Punjab milk alone does not fetch profits to the farmer .The rising incidences of diseases may sink the profits and may be devastating like chemical farming in the past. Unfortunately the pseudo at the top either do not realize the gravity of biosafty or ignore it wittingly.

We have dual purpose breeds like Rathi,Doeni,Hariana,Kankrej,Ongole,Goaloo,Kridhna valley,Mewati,Sri,Bachour,Kharigarh,Unblachery.Ponwar,Vechoer and Pungannure.They gives 1800-3500 kgs /lac/

The Draught breeds are Kandhari,Nimari,Khillari,Amritmahal,Halikar,Nagore,Bargure,Nagore,Kenkatha,

To save the energy we may have to conserve and preserve the draught breeds. A mechanism of pooling the efforts through convergence by vet colleges, institutes, gowshallas and all others to utilise the vast resource is needed. We have fewer problems in small ruminants than in cattle. Here we have to make efforts to limit the numbers within the constituted act and writ of the nation and simultaneously utilize them for the draught purposes to save our energy resources. Who know the turn at the century we may revert back to draught animal power as the way of life. When fossil fuels get exhausted and are costlier.SMALL RUMINANT PRODUCTION SYSTEMS AND ENVIRONMENT