Introduction
India is
endowed with world's largest and most diverse asset of livestock in terms of
species and breeds within the species. It posses one of the world's best dairy
buffaloes, draught cattle, carpet wool sheep and highly prolific goat breeds.
India has a share of 2.4% of the world's areas with 15% and 17.5% of world
livestock and human population respectively. The number of livestock per
hectare is 1.58 and there is one livestock per 2.1 human beings in the country.
Because of large human
population, there is huge demand for land for food in
the country, and there is a stiff competition for food between humans and
animals. The food grains chiefly wheat, paddy, maize, barley, bajra, jowar and
ragi are grown for human consumption and only a smaller part is meant for
livestock and poultry feeding, a chunk of which is again diverted towards
feeding of poultry and swine. Apart from this feed grains, oil cakes and
by-products are one of the chief components of the concentrate feeds commonly
fed to ruminant livestock. Cottonseed cake and meal are often used in cattle
feed throughout the country followed by rapeseed meal whereas groundnut meal is
less popular because of aflatoxin problem. Though the oil cakes are supposed to
be rich in protein and energy, the real scenario is something different. In
commercial feed preparations, the cakes used are mostly solvent extracted which
have been already drained out of maximum oil for human consumption and hence
contain negligible oil content. The problem of adulteration in oil cakes viz.
groundnut husk for cake, ureas for soybean meal, argemone for mustard seed etc.
is also present. Unlike solvent extraction process during expeller processing,
a lot of heat is generated which detoxifies some of the naturally prevalent
toxic principles viz. gossypol in cottonseed cake, glucosinolates in mustard
seed cake, rapeseed cake and protease in soybean meal etc. By considering the
above it is clear that solvent extracted cakes are of poor quality and thus of
low nutritive value. Another inherent issue is regarding the import policy of
oil cakes in India. India regularly imports edible oil instead of the intact
oil seeds which creates problems for the country's crushers, with the solvent
extraction units running at only 50% of capacity. Another chief and usual
ingredient of ruminant ration is fodders and forages, which are again short in
supply. Currently, there is scarcity of land for fodder cultivation giving rise
to a deficit of 25% dry fodder, 20% green and 32% deficit of concentrate mixture
(NIANP, 2012) and the gap between requirement and availability is predicted to
rise further. Since years a large proportion of our animals are underfed.
Through natural selection and human interventions though those animals rose
into stress tolerant and optimal producing breeds but gene responsible for
economical traits might have been suppressed. So, the concern regarding
nutrition of animals need to be taken more seriously by all groups of animal
science researchers.
Strategies undertaken to solve the animal
feed scarcity issue
Improving
productivity in areas already under fodder cultivation, improving productivity
of grazing and pasture ands,
raising perennial fodder crops on field bunds and boundaries, peri-urban areas
and exploiting ununtilized and under-utilized fodder crops are some of the
promising options to enhance fodder availability. In 12th five year plan period promotion of fodder cactus
in arid ecosystem especially in states of Rajasthan and Gujarat is taken up.
Accelerated fodder development programme taken up by the Ministry of
Agriculture (2011) aims at accelerating production of fodder through promotion
of integrated technologies and processes by production of quality seeds and
organized demonstration of appropriate forage equipments through state
Agricultural Universities and adoption of technologies like fodder block making
units, chaff cutter for fodder processing and silage making. Silage has
nutritive value comparable or slightly lower than that of green
forage. Corn silage is a very good source of fodder for dairy animals. It can
be complemented with a protein source such as Lucerne fodder or urea while
making silage. Reports suggest that corn silage provides adequate energy for
growing cattle and buffalo. Variation in fodder availability and quality year
through reduces the intake and digestibility due to change in microbial
population during the transit of fodder, which can be avoided by silage
feeding. Silage processing reduces the daily wages towards labour for cutting
and transport of fodder from field to farms and also leaves the field open for
new crop sowing leading to efficient utilization of land. Thus, more crops
could be obtained from limited land. Another very easy energy saving method of
fodder preservation in tropical climate without compromising quality is by
drying the fodders before reaching maturity in the form of hay. Mostly fodders
like Lucerne, oat, cowpea, berseem etc. Are dried for hay making . Progressive
farmers in Punjab state report that guinea and Lucerne hay could exclusively
support milk yield up to 10 litre. Over the years,
considerable technological
advancement has taken place in the feed and fodders focus in gon enhancement of
their nutritional quality and subsequently productivity enhancement. One such
very effective and well adopted technology is bypass nutrient technology which
has been taken up by private feed manufactures as well as National Dairy
Development Board (NDDB) and dairy federations. Its benefits have percolated to
the ground level. The area specific mineral mixture technology has also helped
to a considerable extent in overcoming the problem of infertility at field level.
The livestock productions systems in India predominantly sustain on feeding of
crop residues. Fodder and crop residue enhancement and densification are also the
strategies adopted to solve the issue of their poor nutritive value. In Feb
2012, National Dairy Plan I (NDP-I) was initiated to achieve the objective of
150 million ton milk yield by the year
2016-17 under which along with production of high genetic merit bulls, semen
production, doorstep AI emphasis
was laid upon ration balancing and fodder development programme. Unless
provided balanced diet, it's not
possible to exploit the genetic potential of animal for higher productivity.
The rations balancing can be done with the feed ingredients available with the
farmer with extra addition of some minerals, vitamins and some concentrate
feeds to fill the deficit of energy and protein in the ration leading to least
cost ration formulation and also efficient utilization of locally available
feed resources. Research and field trials conducted with this idea lead to increased
milk yield, reduced cost of milk production along with reduced methane
emission. Under fodder development programme, focus is laid upon improving productivity
of fodder crops and common grazing lands and conservation of surplus green
fodder for availing during lean season. Local resource persons demonstrate silage
making and re-vegetation of common grazing lands with high yielding cultivated
fodder crops, grasses and pasture legumes. Crops residues form the chief basal
diet of the Indian ruminant livestock though they are not sufficient or
balanced regarding their nutritive value. Hence, they can be enriched with
cakes, brans, grains, molasses, hay and minerals and then densified into
blocks. This aspect of enriching the poor quality feeds is also undertaken in
NDP-I. Such densified blocks can be produced and transported at cheaper cost
compared to the crop residues and areas to achieve optimum production from the
animals. Scientists at IGFRI, Jhansi made the process easy, simple by adding a
gadget to existing threshing machine used in the wheat-fields which lead to
wheat straw treatment in the field without any additional cost (CAR News,
Jan-March, 2014). The scarcity of crop residues is likely to rise in due course,
since a part of cellulose rich crop residues are partitioned towards paper
mill, plywood industry etc. since fibrous
feeds are usual in ruminant ration, there is need to explore additional similar
resources. Plant breeders in India have identified a number of
varieties/hybrids which could give a better quality and higher yield of crop
residue without any compromise in grain yield. This would provide an
opportunity for augmenting the availability of fodder from crops like pearl
millet, sorghum, maize and oats. Development of many interspecies hybrids in
Trifolium is in progress in IGFRI, Jhansi. Systemic forage crop breeding
programme at ICAR institutions and State Agricultural Universities have led to
development of a large number of improved varieties of forage crops suitable
for different agro-ecological zones. Integrated fodder production system can
also be adopted to adjust the cultivation of fodder crops with that of main
crops and harvest them as per the needs. This can easily be practiced by all
classes of farmers under both irrigated and rainfed conditions. A plant like
Azolla contains 25-30% protein, 10-15% minerals and 7-10% of amino acids on
dry matter basis and is rich in essential amino acids, vitamins (vitamin A,
vitamin B12 and ß-Carotene), growth promoter metabolites and minerals like Ca,
P, K, Fe, Cu, Mg etc. It has been tested to be palatable to cattle and other
ruminants with a potential to increase milk production by 15-20% in milch cows.
Aqua plants and vegetable wastes can be very good alternative feed resources
for ruminant feeding after reducing the moisture content to certain limit. With
the scarcity in land for fodder cultivation of aqua plants and their field
trials. As regards aquatic cultivation one of the emerging technology of fodder
cultivation is hydroponics. It is a method of growing plants in water using
mineral nutrient solutions and no soil. Terrestrial plants may be grown with
their roots in the mineral nutrient solution only. Through the concept of
hydroponics is an old one, it has been attracting interest from feed
manufactures. Fruits and vegetable wastes viz. carrot fresh tops and pomace,
carrot wet, cauliflower leaves, sweet potato, tomato pomace dried, tomato pulp,
citrus pulp, baby corn husk and fodder, bottle gourd pulp, banana peels,
muskmelon peels and watermelon peels are produced on a large scale from
processing industries. As per FAO (2012) fruit and vegetable processing,
packing, distribution and consumption in the organized sector in India generate
a total of approximately 1.81 million tones of fruit and vegetable wastes. A
large proportion of these wastes are dumped in landfills or rivers, causing environmental
pollution. Alternatives to such disposal methods could be recycling through
livestock as feed resources or further processing to extract or develop value-added
products which will economize the animal feed and also alleviate the
environmental pollution associated with disposal of fruits and vegetable
wastes.
Conclusion
Feed
scarcity is a major challenge to livestock sector in India. So far though
various strategies have been adopted to combat the existing problem, but it has
not yet reached to farmers levels. So, there is need to rigorously implement the
strategies at all levels of ruminants feeding system. Improved utilization of
straw, stover and crop residues are very important. Fodder variety development
with emphasis on multi-cut needs attention. By products of Food industry and
their utilization in ration balancing should reach the needy dairy farmers. Hay
and silage preparations and feeding can also solve the problem during lean
periods.
Sonali Prusty (Ph.D. Scholar, DCN Division,
NDRI, Karnal)
Vijay Kumar Sharma (SMS, J&K)
Akash Mishra (Ph.D. Scholar, DCN Division,
NDRI, Karnal)
S.S.Kundu (Principal Scientist, DCN
Division, NDRI, Karnal)
Approach 5000+
Veterinarians/ Animal Health Experts
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