Vol. 11, Special Issue 2 (2022)

Author(s):
Dropati Saran, Madhu Sharma, Priyanka Lal and Hemant Sharma

Abstract:
Livestock rearing is one of the most important economic activities in the rural areas providing stable and supplementary income round the year. Milch animals are kept as farming household from very long time in India. The Bikaner district of Rajasthan is selected for the study purposively as it is having largest cattle population and another reason for selecting the district is that if has higher Indigenous Cattle population in the area is second largest enterprise after crop production. Predetermined samples of 180 farmers, selected farmers were categorized into small, medium and large herd-size categories using cumulative square root frequency method. To estimate economic feasibility of milk production in the area, the cost and returns were worked out for different species of milch animals based on per day milk production budgeting technique was used and concluded that the productivity of milk was highest in case of crossbred cows. The net return realized by overall average of crossbred cows was found to be highest (Rs 93.96) followed by buffalo (Rs 60.27) and local cows (Rs 50.05) per animal per day. Net return per milch animal from milk was found to increase with increase in herd size category in case of crossbred cows and buffaloes but in case of indigenous cows net return was highest for medium herd size category. It was observed through the productivity of buffaloes that it was not very high, it gave higher return because of the fact that buffalo milk fetches a better price due to high fat content as compared to cow milk.