Karnataka Veterinary, Animal and Fisheries Sciences University (KVAFSU) is working on a project to help farmers combat fodder scarcity during drought and summer months.
Farmers find it difficult to rear cattle and sheep as green grass is not available round the year. Only big farmers manage to buy oil cakes and other nutritious fodder for the dry months. Small farmers or landless cattle rearers let their animals go around the village to graze shrubs or eat food waste. Bidar-based KVAFSU wants to help such farmers by introducing alternative fodder products.
“We are focusing on bringing out fodder products that are cheaper, can be preserved without refrigeration for a year, and can be prepared in the farmer’s backyard,” C. Renuka Prasad, Vice-Chancellor, said.
The project involves two major components, research and standardisation, and training farmers, he said.
One method that has been perfected is making feed bricks using farm waste and nutritional binding materials such as jaggery, molasses and gram flour. “In districts such as Bidar where cash crops like sugarcane are grown on a large scale, a lot of farm waste is generated during harvest season. Stem and tops of sugarcane is left in the field and set on fire before the next sowing. We will train farmers in feed-brick making,” he said.
Researchers in the Department of Nutrition T. Thirumalesh and Ramachandra Sangam are leading the other three projects of developing alternative fodder. Of these, trials on developing fortified fodder using sugarcane bagasse and banana waste are completed and the methods have been standardised. A pilot on using multiple farm waste to generate fodder pellets is in the final stages.
“Fortified fodder lasts for months and costs a portion of the fodder that can be bought in the market,” said Prof. Thirumalesh.
“These are simple techniques that can be replicated by farmers with minimal training and at low cost. They will be widely publicised,” said Prof. Sangam.
