Technological Problems and Training Needs of Dairy Farmers

A survey was conducted to assess the present status of dairying in Kapurthala district. For this, 3 blocks namely Kapurthala, Sultanpur and Dhilwan were selected. From each block, a cluster of 10 villages (10 dairy farmers from each Village) was selected. It was evident that majority of dairy farmers were either land less or small and medium. On the other hand only 8 per cent farmers who were possessing land more than 10 ha. kept dairy animals which show that large farmers gave more attention to crop production than the dairy farming. Similarly, it was observed that 44.5 and 48.8 per cent of population was keeping up to 5 and 15 animals, respectively. Only 4.3 per cent farmers possessed between 16 to 25 animals and a very small population (2.4%) was possessing more than 25 animals. This showed that very few farmers were practicing dairy business on commercial scale (2.4%) and majority of farmers (93.3%) were having up to 15 animals. Further, it was also noticed that dairy farmers (74.9%) were possessing cows with daily milk yield varying from 4 to 10 l./d and 85.8 per cent of farmers were keeping buffaloes with daily milk yield ranging between 2 to 8 l./d. Major problems of the small dairy farmers were cow dung management while for semi commercial and commercial farmers mastitis was the major problem. Training in the area of feed management was the top priority for domestic and semi commercial farmers.