Vol. 11, Special Issue 10 (2022)

Animal husbandry sector is contributing significantly in the rural economy; where dairy sector is the life line of millions of rural poor in the country. It is also a fact that the dairy sector is one of the fastest expanding occupations and demand for milk is growing day by day not only in cities but also in small towns and rural areas, while rearing dairy heifers from birth to first calving is an expensive investment and it takes a significant time to repay. Therefore, data for this investigation was collected from 120 dairy farmers of the Banaskantha district of Gujarat, and these dairy farmers were classified based on land holdings as marginal, small, medium and large categories of dairy farmers, which were 28.33, 25.84, 27.50 and 18.33 per cent, respectively. The percentage of CBC heifers kept by different categories of farmers was 2.93, 3.17, 3.20 and 2.11 percent for marginal, small, medium, and large farmers, respectively, while the percentage of buffalo heifers kept on these farms was 1.23, 0.88, 0.98, and 0.70 percent. The overall rearing cost of a CBC heifer for all categories of dairy farmers was Rs. 76.49 per animal per day. Similarly, the overall rearing cost of a buffalo heifer was Rs. 77.17 per animal per day. On the basis of these observations, it is concluded that the rearing cost of buffalo heifers was higher than CBC heifers and that these costs may be brought down by adopting better feeding and management practices by the dairy farmers of the region.