Guest guest Posted November 21, 2001 Report Share Posted November 21, 2001 Tharparkar cows (indigenous breed to India) provide more milk on less food. I am not sure about how long the lactation period. "When left on arid pasture the milk production is approximately 1135 kg per lactation, while those animals maintained in the villages average 1980 kg." The point is that breed choice can determine the number of cows produced by the breeding because you would need less cows breeding with a breed such as Tharpakar and therefore less cows produced. Besides this, how about cutting down on the milk needs? With the poor record of taking care of the cows they breed this should be a serious consideration. And then waht about paying a realistic price for the milk so that the Mayapur goshalla is not always in arrears with their financing? A price that takes into consideration of what it takes to protect a cow for an entire lifetime. - "Pancaratna ACBSP" <Pancaratna.ACBSP (AT) pamho (DOT) net> "Cow (Protection and related issues)" <Cow (AT) pamho (DOT) net> Tuesday, November 20, 2001 11:31 PM Mayapur goshalla > Dandavad. Prabhupada kijaya! > > I have been trying to figure out what size of herd you would need to > maintain if you wanted to keep the herd size stable and have 50 cows milking > at any one time (the current number of milkers in Mayapur). The difficulty > is that these cows have a short lactation of less than a year. > > I figure that if each cow is allowed only two calves (theoretically giving 0 > population growth) and if the average life of a cow is 18 years you would > get just one out of 9 cows and bulls milking at any one time to keep > equilibrium. I based this on simply dividing 18 by two years of lactation. > BUt this is just a guess. I can't seem to get my head around the math. > > Does anyone have a better understanding of this? > > Your servant, > Pancaratna das Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted November 21, 2001 Report Share Posted November 21, 2001 If they want 50 cows milking per day then with a 9 month lactation they will have to breed 67 cows per year. Then as you can work out, that will bring a total herd number over 18 years to 1206 animals. A super responsibility that must be done. The herd would look something like this. 67 new calves per year means: 50 milking cows 400 working oxen (200 teams) 200 retired animals 200 young animals 356 dry cows ys syam Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted November 26, 2001 Report Share Posted November 26, 2001 Dandavad. Prabhupada kijaya! ISKCON Jaipur has one of the only remaining pure-bred Tharpakar bulls. Ramanuja prabhu showed me a picture yesterday - a really gorgeous bull. Unfortunately, it seems they don;t like trucking in mud too much. We are looking into their suitability for Mayapur climate. > A price that takes into consideration of what it takes to > protect a cow for an entire lifetime. That is what I am trying to determine,because it is not just the cow but her offspring and their offspring, etc. So I am trying to understand the ratio of milking cows in a stable herd given certain average lactations, life-span, death-rates, etc. So far, it appears that for the Mayapur goshalla to maintain 50 milking cows they would need to maintain a herd of 400-500. Of these at least 175 would be oxen. AT an average of 1 acre of land to maintain 4 cows they need at least 100 acres just for pasture. THen to keep the oxen engaged and productive they need to farm at least 200-300 acres. TO do all this they would need to engage at least 30 families in my estimation. THese thirty families would consume at least 1/3 to 1/2 of the milk production themselves. Like this the calculations go on. My conclusion is that the only real sustainable process is the village approach with common pasture. I believe Mayapur should try to adopt the Ghosh village (traditional cowherds) and work with them to eliminate selling animals from there and engaging all the offspring in agriculture. OUr goshalla should just maintain a few cows and bulls to serve the deities. THe community should work with the traditional cowherds or help estabilsh a new community of devotee farmers. This is the direction I am looking to go in. But in the meantime, some plan is needed for the existing setup. Therefore, we need an economic model to work with to determine what is sustainable. Your servant, Pancaratna das Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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