‘Dairy farmers can feed it to animals every day’, says agricultural economist Dhiraj Singh, referring to a mineral mixture feed that is increasing milk production from dairy cows in Bihar, India.
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This report by ILRI and the National Research Centre on Mithun explores wild forages commonly fed to pigs and mithun by farmers in Nagaland, India Continue reading
A project supported by the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) in India is helping the country’s small-scale mixed crop and livestock farmers increase their incomes by boosting their milk production.
The Cereal Systems Initiative in South Asia (CSISA) project, which is funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), is addressing feed constraints in rice-, wheat-, and maize-based systems by improving the efficiency of rice and wheat straw feeding and increasing the use of inexpensive, locally available and nutritionally dense supplementary feeds such as maize grains. The project is also promoting underutilized cereal residues such as maize stover for livestock feeds. Continue reading
Pakistan’s Daily Times and Technology Times Online recently reported on a livestock feeds training held in Islamabad on 6-9 November 2014. Continue reading
Originally posted on Feeding innovation:
In the hills of Uttarakhand climate change is leading to reduced water from snow-melt being availability for irrigation and more extreme weather events. This is making crop production difficult and some crop land is being abandoned. Men are migrating to find work and many of the women remaining in the…
In the hilly areas of Uttarakhand, a typical farming household has one or two cows, one buffalo and a bullock, and cultivates cereals and vegetables on tiny terraced plots. Livestock make important contributions to livelihoods but providing sufficient feed for them continues to remain a challenge, especially during the winter months.
In Nagaland, Northeast India, pigs are the preferred livestock species and most families rear one to three pigs either for household consumption or for selling or for both. Demand for pigs and pork is growing rapidly and currently outstrips local supply. Intensifying pig production systems and shifting from subsistence to more commercially-oriented production could significantly improve local livelihoods and increase cash income for farmers. The main constraint faced by farmers is proper feeding of their pigs. Continue reading
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