Haryana Livestock and Dairy: Murrah Buffalo and Breeds

Haryana is a small state that feeds a large part of the country's milk supply, and milk here is not a side business but a second crop. Almost every village household keeps buffaloes, the animal rather than the cow being the mainstay, and the state stands among the highest in India in milk available per person. Two names carry the chapter: the Murrah buffalo, which Haryana gave to the rest of the country and to several countries abroad, and the Hariana cattle, the dual purpose breed named after the land itself. Around them sit a cooperative chain, a group of national institutes and a set of schemes, and the examiner asks about all four.

The Murrah buffalo

The Murrah is the most famous animal of Haryana and is called the black gold of the state. It is jet black, sometimes with white markings on the face or the tail tip, heavy bodied, with short, tightly curled horns that distinguish it at a glance from the long horned buffaloes of other regions. Its home tract is Rohtak, Jind, Hisar and Bhiwani, with Jhajjar and Charkhi Dadri around them. The Murrah gives more milk, and milk of higher fat, than any other buffalo breed of India, so it has been taken into almost every state to improve local herds and has been exported to improve buffalo stock abroad as well. A good Murrah bull is a village asset, and the bull shows and milking competitions of the state are reported as news every year.

The other breeds

Cattle in Haryana are mostly of the Hariana breed, a dual purpose animal that gives useful milk and strong bullocks. It is white or light grey, with a long narrow face, a small hump and a compact body, and its home tract is Rohtak, Hisar, Karnal and the old Gurgaon country. Sahiwal cows, a pure milch breed, are also reared. Among sheep the local breed is the Nali of the Hisar and Sirsa side, whose coarse wool goes into carpets, while Hisardale is a fine wool breed developed at Hisar itself by crossing Bikaneri Nali ewes with Merino rams, which is the only sheep breed question the state papers really ask. The goat of the plains is the Beetal, kept for both milk and meat, and poultry has grown into a large industry in the Barwala belt of Panchkula district, one of the biggest poultry clusters of north India.

Milk, Vita and the cooperative chain

Milk is collected through village societies, pooled by district unions and processed by the state dairy development cooperative federation, which sells its milk, ghee, butter, paneer and sweets under the brand Vita. Its plants stand at Jind, Rohtak, Ambala, Ballabgarh, Sirsa and Kurukshetra, and the pattern of society, union and federation is the Anand pattern of Gujarat applied to Haryana. Questions ask for the brand name, for the three tier structure and for the reason buffalo milk dominates, which is its higher fat content and the better price it fetches.

The institutes

Haryana holds an unusual number of national animal science institutes, and their towns are asked as pairs. Karnal has the National Dairy Research Institute, where India's first cloned buffalo calf was produced, and the National Bureau of Animal Genetic Resources, which registers the recognised breeds of the country. Hisar has the Central Institute for Research on Buffaloes, the veterinary and animal sciences university named after Lala Lajpat Rai, the agricultural university named after Chaudhary Charan Singh, and a government livestock farm that is among the largest in Asia. Remember Karnal for dairy and breed records and Hisar for buffaloes, veterinary science and the farm.

Schemes and what examiners test

The state runs artificial insemination and breed improvement work through its animal husbandry department, pays for fodder development and insurance of animals, and has promoted the Pashu Kisan Credit Card so that a dairy farmer can borrow against livestock the way a cultivator borrows against land. Gaushalas are supported through a state cow service commission. For the examination the chapter reduces to a short list: Murrah with its home districts and its curled horns, Hariana as the cattle breed, Hisardale as the sheep bred at Hisar, Vita as the dairy brand, Karnal and Hisar for their institutes, and the standing fact that Haryana is one of the leading states in milk available per person.