Animal Husbandry: Quick Revision

A brief note on Animal Husbandry. Read it before a test. Try each question at the end before you open its answer.

Cattle

• Animal husbandry: the scientific management of livestock: feeding, breeding and disease control.
• Milch animals give milk. Draught animals do farm work. The cow is Bos indicus, and the buffalo is Bos bubalis.
• Lactation period: the milk production after a calf is born. Milk in one lactation is milk a day times days.
• Exotic breeds (Jersey, Brown Swiss) give a long lactation. Local breeds (Red Sindhi, Sahiwal) resist disease. Cross them.
• Roughage is fibre-rich. Concentrates are rich in protein. Vaccination protects before disease comes.

Poultry

• Layers give eggs. Broilers give meat. Indian breeds (Aseel) are crossed with foreign breeds (Leghorn).
• Good traits: many good chicks, dwarf broilers as parents, heat tolerance, low care.
• Needs: clean housing, the right feed, a vaccination programme.

Fish

• Capture is catching wild fish. Culture is rearing fish.
• Marine fisheries use the sea. Mariculture rears marine animals and plants. Inland fisheries use fresh and brackish water.
• Composite fish culture: catla (top), rohu (middle), mrigal and common carp (bottom), grass carp (weeds).
• Hatcheries give pure seed, using hormones to make fish breed.

Bees

• Apiculture gives honey and beeswax. An apiary is a place with hives.
• Four honeybees: Apis cerana indica, Apis dorsata, Apis florea, Apis mellifera (Italian bee).
• The Italian bee gives much honey, stings little and breeds well.
• Pasturage is the flowers within reach. It decides the amount and the quality of honey.

A worked example

A farmer keeps $5$ cows. Each gives $8$ litres of milk a day for $200$ days of lactation. The milk sells at $30$ rupees a litre. How much milk is that, and what is its worth?

1. Milk for one cow. $8 \times 200 = 1600$ litres.
2. Milk for the herd. $5 \times 1600 = 8000$ litres.
3. The worth. $8000 \times 30 = 240000$ rupees.

Practice with new numbers

A program to try

The program finds a small farm's income in a week from milk and eggs.

Mistakes to avoid

• Cow and buffalo names: Bos indicus is the cow, and Bos bubalis is the buffalo.
• Milch and draught: milch animals give milk, and draught animals work.
• Adding instead of multiplying milk a day and days of lactation.
• Composite culture means several kinds of fish in one pond, at different levels.
• Profit is income minus cost.

Check yourself

1. What does animal husbandry include?

2. Why is an exotic breed crossed with a local breed?

3. Which fish feeds near the surface in composite fish culture?

4. Name the honeybee that has been brought to India to raise the honey yield.

5. A dairy sells $20$ litres of milk a day at $40$ rupees a litre. What is the income in $5$ days?