FAO implements dairy cattle and buffalo improvement project

Sri Lanka receives help from the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations to establish a ‘Pedigree and Performance Recording Scheme (PPRS)’. The Department of Animal Production and Health recently concluded a 22-month long FAO funded pilot project in the Kurunegala and Nuwara Eliya Districts.

A spokesperson for the FAO told The Island that they had a one-day workshop in Kandy to discuss what she called the ongoing dairy cattle and buffalo improvement project. Responding to a query, she said: "We launched the project in March, 2010. It will lay a strong foundation to establish a ‘Pedigree and Performance Recording Scheme (PPRS)’ involving about 2,500 lactating animals, plus young stock from the Kurunegala and Nuwara Eliya districts."

She said that with the experience gained, the project would be expanded to all other districts. "The first year will consist of activities that include, farm selection, registration, establishing milk analysis, data input and analysis, organizing training programmes, record keeping, selection of bull-mothers and inseminating them with imported semen, selection of young bulls from the top 1% and 10% bull-mothers for Artificial Insemination (AI) and Natural Mating (NM), respectively".

The official said that two agreements had been finalised with the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine and Animal Science and the Faculty of Agriculture to improve the training capacities of field extension staff in dairy cattle and buffalo reproduction and nutrition. "This is a three-tier training programme where the partners will develop training modules and train Veterinary Surgeons in areas prioritized according to farmer needs after a comprehensive survey. This will then be followed by training the next tier the Middle Level Technicians (MLT) in intricacies involved in artificial breeding in view of improving various breeding standards and on feeding dairy cattle and buffaloes for better production, under the supervision of LoA partners. The next is to utilize these MLTs in government programmes in training farmers and in developing production targets with timelines," she said. (SF)

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