Now, Amul Dairy to produce genetically superior bulls

Vadodara/ Anand: The Kaira District Co-operative Milk Producers Union Limited (KDCMPUL) popularly known as Amul Dairy is setting up a 'Bull Mother Farm' at its Dairy Demonstration Farm (DDF) at Mogar to produce exotic and genetically superior bulls for semen production.
The bull mother farm will house pure-bred Jersey and Holstein Friesian (HF) cows and bulls as well as HF and Jersey cross-bred bulls besides indigenous cattle and buffalo breed bulls that will be totally free from diseases.
Imported female sex sorted semen will be used in the heifers of Amul's Heifer Farm at Sarsa for production of females with high genetic makeup. Amul's Sarsa farm has nearly 1,000 such heifers.
These females with high genetic makeup will be further inseminated with high quality imported semen to produce males of very high genetic makeup. The females born out of this breeding process would be used as replacement bull mothers.
"The males thus produced will be used at Amul's semen station for production of semen which in turn will be used for breeding cows of Kheda, Anand and Mahisagar districts. The surplus semen will be sold nationally," said Amul Dairy's managing director Dr K Rathnam, adding that the bull mother farm will have nearly 150 high lactating dams.
The farm is equipped to monitor environmental conditions, feed intake, nutritional availability, animal health through specially designed software.
State-of-the-art milking parlour is also being set up with integrated database system for round the clock monitoring.
"We (Amul) have created a trench of traditions, initiatives and ventures. These development on such a large scale would be one of its kind in the country," he said, adding that the initiative will help farmers of the country as lack of quality semen and availability are presently serious concerns to the industry.
"We are doing this for welfare of our milk producers as it will help upgrade the native livestock by improving its productivity," Rathnam said, adding that if replicated nation-wide it will enhance milk production and productivity of bovines across the country.