कल्पान्तरे विश्वासटिप्पन्यः

Personal Preference for deshI-s

curious if you could list your reasons for preferring deshi cows ( our steppe ancestors likely shifted to it after invasion)

My reasons are not science based , only experience (might even be confirmation bias, I can’t say) and practicality.

Also, while the quantity of milk is lesser, the density is higher, you get more ghee from same amount of desi cow milk, if fed well on grains - I’ve seen myself, like our cows do - their milk being dense at par with buffaloes. This is unacheivable in videshi cows.

desi cows being have infinite tolerance of weather and disease resistance when compared to videshi ones.. from 46-47 degrees (and even higher in deserts) to almost 0 degree, they don’t need any extra effort, fans in summer or jackets in winter.

They give many more children , as much as twice, so even though per lactation period milk yield is about half of videshi , but over a lifetime it is same + we get more calves (male calves are now though not of much use).
- This happens when you feed her well - even when she’s not lactating or not pregnant. What villagers do is send her out into the fields because they don’t have money and mindset, in her dry period, this reduces her health and then ability to bear children.
They don’t eat even half of what an average HF eats, so a lot of money is saved when you calculate over the whole year.
A life cycle for a healthy desi cow is about 20-22 years.

And yes, as manu says, don’t drink milk of cow which gives milk without (dead/ sold) vatsa. Videshi-s do so very easily, desi doesn’t.
They look much more beautiful, proportionate body structure, curvy structure looks very pleasing.
are smarter / more loving , remember their owners even after years of separation.
They don’t hit humans anywhere close to as much as videshi cows do.
- Like the incidents of bulls killing people, in all cases I’ve heard it was always a videshi or sankara bull.
Cleanliness conscious - I’ve seen them standing for 30-36 hours on end of their place is not clean , like ours gets muddy when it rains too much, though now we have solved this problem.
In desi cows also, the milk quantity is similar across most breeds but some breeds sell for much higher costs, for ex. Gir cow has been marketed extremely well by gujarati-s, a pure gir costs 1-1.2 lacs at least.. whereas similar milk producing rathi cow comes at about 30-40k.

Western model: take milk as long as she gives, when she doesn’t give milk, take meat. Indians for religious reasons can’t take meat - so they just oust the cow and her calf when the milk is not enough.
When you follow the business model of west, you certainly gain monetary terms when you keep foreign cows.
- The world record (or India record) for HF cow is about 50 Litres in a day. For Indian breed, it is not even half of this , although emotional Indian breeders would claim anything. Milk is what, at least 40 rs a liter, suppose a foreign cow gives 20-25 ltr (a min), that is 1000 rs a day w/o adding water.
- Foreign cows lactate even after calf is separated.
- I think you’ve not counted the adulteration part, adding water to milk. And all of it multiplies with number of cows.
Indian breeds can’t compete on that without counting in the long/whole lifecycle term - if the farmers are forced to keep their cows till they die, they’ll jump back.

Who has that much stamina to take care of an animal ? A few bad / dry months and they just throw her out. This is really important, the stamina to stay put with a single animal, as I said earlier. 20-22 years is a long time, people want money now, not 5 years later; 1000rs of milk a day vs 4-500.
A desi cow wouldn’t give half of the milk + have to rear the calf as well, the calf also eats, falls sick, needs to be taken care of in summers and winters..
New Families can’t keep animals now, even in villages, lesser number of children + spreading of education, and even the uneducated new brides and young men don’t want to get involved in this mess
You can’t go for vacation as you’re only at max 4-5 adults in the house , so things are being done in a more organized way where small profits combine to give bigger results.
No, milk production, cattle rearing , farming will never be organized because a) these people don’t have brains b) land these days is an insurance for bad times so no one will give up for even a day.

Plus no one actually uses their brains, they do not have I think. In each village there will be a few successful (money wise) foreign cow breeders, the smaller ones just want to copy their model.

it aeems that indian breeds are going to be preserved for sentimental/ fashion reasons (like pure breed foreign dogs) while hybrids will dominate.
Govts are trying (to develop hardy + high yielding hybrids). hHaryana govt made a cow haridhenu, which was 68% HF and rest sahiwal + haryanvi , the project’s success is unclear as of now

Somewhere between desi and videshi cows, people still keep them because you get money for their meat.
An average buffalo sells for 25k for meat, her calf also goes above 20k at 1-1.5 years of age , 3-4 years of age and it goes for 50-60k.
But buffaloes have low hot weather tolerance so you’d see them always taking a bath in summers. Govt gives cheap electricity so where the ponds have been ruined, farmers will just turn on the submersible motors and splurge water which is an abundant resource in north India except for rajasthan.