Role of traditional feeding practices in solving forage inadequacy issue in sub-mountainous Punjab, India

Abstract

An on-farm study was conducted to record the role of traditional livestock feeding practices, particularly the roleof tree leaves in fulfilling the fodder requirement of dairy animals in 'low-input and low-output' systems of submountainous zone of Indian Punjab. Findings of the study were based on primary data of mixed farms equallyspread over different farm size groups of randomly selected district Hoshiarpur from sub-mountainous zone of Punjab state. The study highlighted that the supplementation of tree leaves in addition to cultivated fodderhelped the small and medium farmers to attain the adequacy of green fodder. During the summer season, treeleaves, on an average, improved the green forage DM availability at small farms by 128.0% (1.89 to 4.31kg/d/ACU) and at medium farms by 70.6% (2.69 to 4.59 kg/d/ACU). In the winter season, the correspondingpercentage for small and medium farms stood at 112.8 and 76.0%, respectively. The study further enunciatedthat fodder utilization/ACU on fresh basis was statistically higher in large farms, while in terms of dry matter(DM), fodder utilization was statistically at par for all selected landholding categories. Following the traditionalpractice of supplementing tree leaves with cultivated fodder (scenario 2), the proportion of farms (irrespectiveof size) with adequate fodder was recorded at 62.2% in summer season and 88.9% in winter season incomparison to 26.7 and 40.0% in hypothetical case of relying only on cultivated fodders (scenario 1).