Vol. 12, Issue 3 (2023)

Author(s):
Abhiram Naidu K, Hemanth M, Sai Ram N, Anbupriyan T, Bhanu Rekha V and Sundarachelvan

Abstract:
Dairy farming is one of the most common practices followed by the farmers in India. India has a cattle population of 192.49 million during 2022 and 71,984 in Puducherry alone but the biosecurity measures followed for the production of clean and hygienic milk has been lacking. Considering this, a questionnaire was structured and 31 farmers from three different regions of Puducherry were interviewed using Epicollect5 software. Among the respondents all of them reared cross-bred cattle and majority were uneducated and are above 50 years of age. About 55% of the farmers followed semi-intensive type of rearing. Only 32% of the farmers were aware about the importance of vaccination and regularly vaccinated their herd. On the other hand, 38% of the farmers followed regular deworming schedule for their animals. All the farmers in the study followed Artificial Insemination as the method of breeding, none of the farmers were aware of using protective equipment during the milking process and all milk is directly processed by the milk cooperatives. It was observed in this study that the knowledge among the farmers regarding the biosecurity measures is very low necessitating the importance of training programs for safe and hygienic milk production.