Feeding Management Practices of Gir Cattle followed in Gujarat, India

Abstract

The present study was undertaken to collect information on feeding management practices of Gir cattle at Junagadh district and data were ascertained from randomly selected 320 Gir cattle owners through personal interview with the help of pre-tested structured schedule from four randomly selected talukas of Junagadh district, Gujarat. Majority of Gir cattle owners (86.88%) followed stall feeding system and most of them (93.44%) cultivated green fodder crops for feeding of Gir cattle. Majority (81.56%) of the respondents fed green and dry fodder as such. Groundnut gotar was the major ingredient (71.87%) used as dry fodder, 84.06 % respondents provided compound cattle feed as concentrate to their milking animals. Only 8.12 % of the Gir cattle owners followed scientific feeding of concentrates. Majority of the respondents fed concentrates to their young calves (80.94%) and heifers (87.5%) after soaking (62.81%) in water. 17.5 % of the respondents supplemented mineral mixture to their Gir cattle.

Management practices followed by indigenous cattle owners under field conditions in western Maharashtra

“…It was revealed that overall, 72.00 per cent of cattle owners prefer pucca manger for feeding, 19.33 per cent use kuccha manger for feeding and remaining 08.67 per cent had no manger for feeding. In the pucca manger majority of i.e., 46.00 per cent use cement constructed manger for feeding and 26.00 per cent prefer steel manger (Kasondra et al, 2022). From the above observation it was revealed that overall, about 62.67 per cent didn't used bedding material on the floor in winter season because wastage of fodder and only 37.33 per cent cattle owners used bedding material.…”