Haryana Quiz: Livestock and Dairy (Murrah Buffalo)

In the Gerber test a measured quantity of milk is mixed with sulphuric acid and amyl alcohol in a butyrometer and spun in a centrifuge; the acid digests everything but the fat, which rises into the graduated neck of the tube and is read off directly as a percentage.

The corrected lactometer reading, written CLR, is the figure read on the neck of a lactometer floating in milk, and the specific gravity is obtained from it by the simple relation one plus the reading divided by one thousand.

The Merino, of Spanish origin and now reared in large numbers in Australia, is the standard fine wool sheep of the world, its fleece being soft, dense and of very small fibre diameter.

The correct answer, as marked in the paper, is D, Kankrej. The Kankrej of the Kutch and Banaskantha country is rated the best of the Indian dual purpose cattle breeds: it is the largest and heaviest of them, its bullocks have the fastest and most enduring gait of any Indian…

The Murrah is the buffalo of Rohtak, Jind, Hisar and Bhiwani, jet black and heavy bodied with short, tightly curled horns, and it yields more milk and richer milk than any other buffalo breed of India.

The breed takes its name from the region and is the classic dual purpose cattle of the state: white or light grey, with a long narrow face, a small hump and strong legs, giving a useful quantity of milk and bullocks once prized for ploughing and carting.

The buffalo research institute was set up at Hisar because the town sits in the Murrah tract and already had the agricultural university and a very large government livestock farm, so breeding stock and expertise were at hand.

The National Dairy Research Institute at Karnal is the premier dairy research body of the country, working on milk production, processing and animal reproduction, and the first cloned buffalo calf of India was produced in its laboratories.

Vita is the brand under which it sells milk, ghee, butter, paneer, curd and sweets, and the milk behind the brand is gathered on the three tier Anand pattern: village societies collect it, district unions pool it and the federation processes and markets it through plants at Jind, Rohtak, Ambala…

Hisardale was bred at Hisar in Haryana to get finer wool from animals that could still live in the hot dry plains, so the hardy local Nali ewes of the Bikaner side were crossed with Merino rams, the standard fine wool breed of the world.