Osmanabadi Field Unit, NARI, Phaltan, Maharashtra

Principal Investigator:

Dr. Chanda Nimbkar, Director, NARI, Phaltan

Activity assigned and targets fixed for each activity during the period

• The performance recording on growth, milk yield, reproduction, health etc. will be done separately for each group and reporting will be made accordingly.
• The unit will maintain at least 4 Centres having at least 600 breedable does under the coverage.
• Selection of males and females will be made on the basis of 6 month body weight in small breeds (Black Bengal) and 9 month body weight in medium and large breeds.
• Multiple birth born kids will be preferred over single born kids in the selection of future bucks.
• Semen bank will be established by the unit to store at least 1000 doses of semen of each elite buck available in the field area to promote ex-situ conservation of the breed and 500 semen doses to be sent to NBAGR, Karnal.
• The socio-economic studies will be undertaken and viability of goat rearing will be worked out.
• Strategic supplementary feeding schedule will be followed to improve the nutritional level of the goats.
• Health coverage will be provided to all the goats in the project area in collaboration with State Animal Husbandry Department.
• Marketing aspects of live goats and goat products viz. meat, milk, skin, hair and manure will be studied.
• Efforts will be made to form goat breeders’ societies, cooperative societies and to register the goat flocks in the breeding tract of the respective breeds.

3 Activity carried out during the period
A new centre of the Osmanabadi Field Unit was started in July 2013 in Borla village (with about 130 goats) in Jamkhed taluka of Ahmednagar district, thus making the total number of centres four; Wadgaon in Satara district, Kamone in Solapur district and Sakat and Borla in Ahmednagar district. Total 723 adult does and their 1505 kids were recorded during 2013-14. There were 116, 297 and 310 adult female goats in Satara, Solapur and Ahmednagar districts respectively, belonging to 232 goat keepers. The average number of goats per household was thus 3.12. All goats and kids were protected with vaccination as per schedule and deworming and spraying as required. Milk yields of 400 does were recorded about 4 times during the lactation. The opening and closing balances of the number of recorded goats classified according to sex and age group are given in Table 1.

About 90% of the does older than one year, kidded during the year and 15-20% of the does kidded twice in the year. The average litter size from 874 kiddings during the year in the four villages was 1.72. 51% of the kidded does had twins, 39% had singles and 10% had triplets or quadruplets. The overall average litter size over five years was 1.68 from 5,662 kids born in 3,372 kiddings.
Table 1 Flock statistics of Osmanabadi goats at four centres

Body weight
The least squares means of birth, 3, 6 and 9 month weights of kids from project villages in Satara, Osmanabad, Solapur and Ahmednagar districts are given in Table 2. There were 2286, 1555, 306 and 103 records for birth weight, 3-month weight, 6-month weight and 9-month weight, respectively. The overall least squares mean weight was 2.4±0.07 kg at birth, 10.5±0.2 kg at 3 months, 15.7±0.6 kg at 6 months, and 22.7±1.9 kg at 9 months. The phenotypic standard deviation of 3 month weights was 2.7 kg and that of 6 month weight was 3.8 kg, indicating substantial scope for selection. The highest weight at 3-months was 20.0 kg while the highest weight at 6 months was 30.8 kg.The average growth rate up to 3 months of single, twin and triplet kids was 102 gm, 82 gm and 75 gm per day, respectively. It was about 54 gm per day, 61 gm per day and 53 gm per day for single, twin and triplet born kids from 3 to 6 months of age. The average kid growth rates differed among villages. The average daily gain of kids up to 3 months age was higher in Karmala and Jamkhedtalukas (89 gm) than in Phaltantaluka (73 gm).
Table 2: Least squares means of body weight (kg) of Osmanabadi kids

Milk production
The least squares means of 100 day milk yield for different levels of significant fixed effects are given in Table 3. The 100-day milk yield of does that had given birth to single, twin, triplet and quadruplet kids was 63.6±2.1 kg, 94.4±1.8 kg, 126.8±3.8 kg and 144.7±14.9 although there were only four records of does with quadruplets. There was about a 50% increase in milk yield with the increase in litter size from single to twins and a 34% increase when the litter size increased from twins to triplets. Goats from Kamone in Karmala taluka had 34% higher least-squares mean 100-day milk yield than those in Phaltan taluka. We have been able to identify good milk producing does in the villages. Eighteen does (2%) out of 887 does whose 100-day lactation milk yields were analyzed, were found to yield more than 200 litres and one doe had a 100-day lactation yield of 330 litres.
Table 3. Least squares means of 100-day milk yield of Osmanabadi does

Reproductive performance

The age at first kidding of 201 does born from 2009 to 2012 was available accurately. The average age at first kidding was 413+90 days (about 13.5 to 14 months) with a range of 249 to 703 days. This means that the average age at first ovulatory oestrus is 8.5 to 9 months. The average kidding interval was 282.7+83.4 days or 9.4 months.

Osmanabadi Buck Semen Freezing
We have frozen about 7000 semen doses of 25 Osmanabadi bucks in straws in the ‘State of the Art Buck Semen Freezing and AI Centre’ set up at Nimbkar Agricultural Research Institute with a grant from the Government of India under the ‘Integrated Development of Small Ruminants Scheme’. Four thousand of these were given to the Government of Maharashtra and were supplied by the government to five district AI centres – Solapur, Ahmednagar, Aurangabad, Buldhana and Osmanabad. Seven hundred straws were given to field technicians in Satara, Solapur, Ahmednagar, Pune and Nashik districts and 100 straws were taken by veterinarians in Bangalore district in Karnataka. Five hundred doses have been deposited at the semen bank at NBAGR for breed conservation, as per the technical programme of the AICRP on Goat Improvement. Each dose contains 100 million spermatozoa and the post-thaw progressive motility of the frozen semen is >60%. The conception rate using frozen semen on cervical AI of does in natural oestrus at the goat keepers’ door or brought to our farm was 50% on average. The Unit has thus refined, validated and implemented AI in the field. We have more than 1000 frozen semen doses of Osmanabadi bucks in storage.

Mortality
Year wise mortality in Osmanabadi goat field unit

Socio-Economic Survey
Goat keeping was a supplementary occupation to crop farming for the majority of the goat keepers under the project. Up to 90% of goat keepers from all project villages owned some land. About half the goat keepers from all project villages were young (in the 31-50 years age group) but one third to half the goat keepers in each centre were illiterate. Forty to 50% of the goat keepers in all the villages kept only one adult doe each while another 34 to 47% kept two to five adult does each. About half the does in the project were with families owning less than 5 does each while half were with families owning 6-20 does.
The main source of income from Osmanabadi goat rearing is sale of kids below one year of age. During 2013-14, 35% of the 879 male kids and 21% of the 902 female kids in the 3-6 months age group were sold while 63% of the 392 male kids and 40% of the 586 female kids in the 6-12 months age group were sold by project goat keepers.
The average kidding interval was 9.4 months, implying each goat had 1.3 kiddings per year. With the average litter size of 1.72 kids, this means 2.24 kids born per doe per year. With average 6% mortality in the 0 to 6 months age group, this means 2.1 saleable kids per doe per year. For an average sale weight of 14 kg and average sale price of Rs.180 per kg, this works out to a gross income of Rs.5,292 per doe per year.

Dissemination of Pro-Poor Goat-Based Technologies
For the first time in 2013-14, fodder seed of the legume Desmanthusvirgatus and of the multi-cut fodder sorghum variety COFS-29 developed by the Tamil Nadu Agricultural University was supplied to 16 participating goat keepers in Wadgaon and Kamone. They have developed small fodder plots using the seed and their goats have benefited from good quality home-grown fodder.
Four self-help groups (SHG) of women (61 members in total) were established in Wadgaon, Borla and Kamone. These are operating smoothly with regular meetings and micro-finance benefits to all members. The women SHG members of Wadgaon were trained in goat management and first-aid in evening one-hour sessions held in their village in the first week of January 2014 and three of the women can now do preliminary treatment of their goats. The training course started with nine trainees out of which five were enthusiastic and attended every session. They were given diaries and important points and hints from the training content were written in them. The topics covered in the training were:

• Importance of weighing kids
• How to estimate the expected sale price of a kid or goat
• How to estimate age of a goat from dentition
• How to select a goat for purchase
• Control of ecto-parasites such as ticks and fleas
• Importance of vaccination of goats and the three important goat vaccines ET, HS and PPR
• Sustainable worm control in goats, use of the FAMACHA chart to detect anaemia due to Haemonchuscontortus infection in goats
• Goat management at the time of kidding and feeding management of young and growing kids
• Types of wounds and methods of dressing and treating them
• How to detect sickness in goats and simple oral medicines for ailments of the respiratory and digestive systems

Gaps/constraints/shortfalls/excess and reasons thereof, if any
---Nil---

PC’s evaluation: very good (A) Good (B) poor (C)

-------------------Very Good (A)--------------------

Future programme identifying the activities, timeline and targets for each of the activity

            This Unit has to full fill not only the technical programme but also, refine, validate and implement AI in the field on trial basis.

Remarks

            The Unit is doing very good work, is extremely responsive and benefitting farmers through the project.