Comparative study of cost of milk production on organised farm

Livestock production in India has been mostly primitive and unorganised. The animals are treated as an adjunct to food crop production, which is necessarily a major occupation of farmers. The production of livestock products is through an extensive multi-Iocational system which keeps million of farmers occupied, but limits the productivity to meet only the domestic demands & small amount of surplus. A growth of 4.5% has been achieved by dairy sector during the past decade as compare to 2% growth recorded by agricultural sector as a whole. A target of doubling the milk production by 2015 is possible, only if organised farming will be taken on large scale. For this, efforts must be made to bring about substantial increase in productivity to the tune of 12-15 kg for crossbred , 5-8 kg for indigenous cows and 8-12 kg for buffaloes. In order to achieve this, scientific dimensions to dairy farming have to be added in a large way, by establishing organised dairy cattle units of different sizes. Apart from these, one of the major problems in livestock sector is the wide gap between availability and requirement of green fodders. Keeping these two issues of national level, the present study was conducted at micro level at an organised farm with specific objectives of estimation of cost of milk production of different breeds of cattle and buffalo as well as working out the gap between availability and requirement of green fodders. The sample size constitute 105 zebu milch cattle (Tharparker:9 and Sahiwal :96) , 33 K.S.,154 K.F. and 115 Murrah milch animals. The milking average for Zebu, K.S., K.F. and Murrah was found to be 6.63, 10.68, 12.35 and 7.26 kg respectively where as the herd average 4.2, 7.5, 10.2 and 5.15 kg respectively. The gross maintenance cost per day was found to be highest for K.F. (73.66 Rs) and followed by K.S. (Rs 64.36), M.U.( Rs 59.54) and Zebu (Rs 52.87).The weighted average gross maintenance cost per day for crossbred was found to be Rs. 72.23. The net cost of milk production was found to be highest for Zebu (Rs 12.20) followed by M.U. (Rs 10.94), K.S. (Rs 8.26) and K.F. (Rs 7.01) respectively. On considering the contractual labour, the gross maintainence cost was found to be Rs. 43.29, Rs 53.96, Rs 63.42 and 48.65 Rs for Zebu, K.S., K.F. and Murrah respectively and gross cost of milk production was found to be Rs 10.31, Rs 7.20, Rs 6.22and Rs 9.45 respectively. The FCM and SNF corrected yield of Zebu, K.S., K.F. and Murrah was found to be 4.75,7.50, 9.94 and 9.66 Kg respectively. The cost of F.C.M. and S.N.F. corrected milk was found to be Rs 11.12, Rs 8.58, Rs 7.41and Rs 6.16 for Zebu, K.S., K.F. and Murrah respectively. A comparison with earlier study shows that the cost of producing a litre of milk in case of Zebu has increased nearly 20 times over the period of nearly four decades. Another study shows substantial increase in maintenance cost per day of milch animals by 13, 17, 35 and 33 percent in case of Zebu, K.S., K.F. and Murrah respectively over a period of half decade. With respect to another objective, the green fodders were found surplus in Nov, Dec, Jan, and Feb where as found deficit in the month of April, May and June.