Existing Management Practices of Buffaloes Owners in Udaipur District of Rajasthan, India

India has one of the largest livestock population in the world, accounting 56 percent of the world buffalo population and 16 percent cattle population (18 th Livestock Census). Buffaloes play a critical role in the intensification of agriculture in farming system. The animals ensure the farmers socioeconomic security. Therefore, proper housing along with feeding management practices play a very significant role in exploiting real potentials of dairy animals (Sinha et al., 2009). Proper housing reduces the energy wastage in maintaining thermo neutral zone as well as reduces the incidence of diseases. It is generally agreed that an animal fail to prove its potential for higher production when fed at low levels.


Introduction
India has one of the largest livestock population in the world, accounting 56 percent of the world buffalo population and 16 percent cattle population (18 th Livestock Census). Buffaloes play a critical role in the intensification of agriculture in farming system. The animals ensure the farmers socioeconomic security. Therefore, proper housing along with feeding management practices play a very significant role in exploiting real potentials of dairy animals (Sinha et al., 2009). Proper housing reduces the energy wastage in maintaining thermo neutral zone as well as reduces the incidence of diseases. It is generally agreed that an animal fail to prove its potential for higher production when fed at low levels. practices adopted by the farmers of different villages of Udaipur district of Rajasthan.

Materials and Methods
The field survey was conducted on 3942 farmers to collect the information related to management and feeding practices in 22 villages of Udaipur district of Rajasthan. In all villages surveyed more than 80 % farmers were keeping buffaloes in 6 villages and 50-80 % in 10 villages depleting that majority of the farmers in villages kept buffaloes. The selected farmers were interviewed and collect the desired information with help of pretested questionnaire.

Results and Discussion
The management practices of housing and feeding followed by all the farmers were studied and each of these practices has been described in following sub-section.

Housing management practices
The perusal of the results revealed that majority (66.33 %) of the farmers kept their animals during night time followed by housing during day (33.62 %). The most of the farmers (51.50 %) had open type and rest of the farmers closed type animal house. Among the all respondents 92.20 % farmers had kuccha type of roof for their animal housing. These houses are mainly made up of locally available material like bamboo, forest wood, plastered with mud mixed with cow dung. Similar finding was reported by many researchers (Sahu, 2001;Bainwal et al., 2007;Kalyankar et al., 2008).
As for as location of shed is concerned, 56.87 percent owners kept their animal near or part of residence as compared to separate houses (43.13 %). Purpose of keeping animals near to residence area would be to save cost of constructions of house as income becomes a limiting factor to spend anything on animal housing. Majority of the respondents kept kuccha (96.77 %) floor in their shed and only 19.76 % had provision of urine drainage facility. These findings are in closed conformity with the results of Kumar et al., (2006). Farmers had the belief that animal feel comfortable on kuccha floor during standing and sitting. The rest of animal houses i.e. 3.23 % have pucca floor. Further reported by Patel et al., (2005), Choudhary et al., (2006 in North Gujrat and Singh et al., (2007 b) in Rajasthan in their survey observed that most of the animal houses had kuccha floor. It is general observation that pucca floor is better than earthen floor for animals to keep them free from worms problems and also from hygienic point of view. The farmers under these study showed awareness is less about these problems and mainly they gave preference to earthen floor, as it remained cheap and comfortable to animals. The majority of animal houses kuccah roof, which might be due to easy availability of material locally and also might be influenced by traditional practices. Peculiarity in roof type found was special type designed to suit the heavy rainfall in Udaipur of Rajasthan state. Similar finding was reported by Singh et al., (2007 b) in their survey region.
Pucca drainage facility of urine was found in only 1.01 % of animals shed, while remaining 98.99 percent had no drainage facility and urine soaked by earthen floor of animal shed as given in table 1. The result is in agreement with the findings of Patel et al., (2006), Choudhary et al., (2006 and Bainwal et al., (2007) but their respondents showed slightly higher number in providing pucca drain. Contrary to this Modi (2003) reported very high (82 %) of respondents provided pucca drain. This shows the degree of awareness of dairy owners of Sabarkantha district.
To protect the animals from extreme weather i.e. sever cold and hot by making a half height of boundary wall (65.29 %) and with good ventilation (87.82 %). This shows that farmers are aware to protecting their animals against inclement weather.

Feeding management practices
Lucerne was the main green fodder about 85.43% of respondents for feeding to buffaloes followed by 11.24% farmers not to fed cultivated green fodder to their animals. Majority of respondents growing legume fodders as compared to non-legumes. Green fodder feeding by the respondents in the present study area is higher. Similar finding was also reported by Swaroop and Prasad (2007). It may be due to the availability of more irrigation facility in the study area. Not a single farmer practiced for silage making because of lack of knowledge. Around 56.80% of farmers fed their buffaloes mixed type dry fodder and rest of jowar (24.21%) and maize karbi (11.47%).
Our results (Table 2) indicated that majority (57.25%) of the respondents have not practiced for feeding grain and rest of used grain in concentrate mixture for feeding. Among these respondents majority of farmers fed barley (34.41%) to their animals followed by maize, jowar, mixed and wheat.   Garget al., (2005) and contrary to Singh et al., (2004).
Regarding to pretreatment of concentrate mixture 69.35% of the respondents cooked concentrate mixture followed by soaking and cooking concentrate mixture before feeding.
All most 100% of respondents were feeding (Table 2) concentrate to lactating buffaloes at the time of milking. Only 0.05% of the farmers fed concentrate mixture mixed with fodder. The data of concentrate feeding to advanced pregnant buffalo was encouraging i.e. 95.98% of the respondents were feeding concentrate mixture as a special ration to advanced pregnant buffaloes which are essential because green fodder availability round the year was very low and possibility of green fodder production throughout the year was also less. The present findings are encouraging than reported by Grag et al., (2005) and Kumar et al., (2006).
Only 31 and 19 percent of the respondents fed mineral mixture and common salt to their buffaloes, respectively, a finding in agreement with the reports of Malik et al., (2005), Kumar et al., (2006) and Nagalakshmi et al., It can be concluded based on present study indicated that adoption of scientific housing and feeding management practices was poor in survey area. Majority of animal houses were open type and had kaccha floor, used earthen plates with thatched for roofing material supported on wooden poles. Pucca drainage facility of urine was found in only 1.01% of animal shed. Not a single farmer practiced for silage making. Mineral mixtures were provided by only 31% of farmers and only 19% respondents were provided salt to their buffaloes. There are few aspects where they followed management practices properly to certain extent but most of the housing and feeding practices needs to be improved a lot in this area.