The present study was conducted in Palakkad district of Kerala as a research activity of ASRTC Trust. A Schedule was developed to record socioeconomic profile of the respondents. Data was collected from 240 dairy farmers using questionnaires by personal interview method and was analysed with statistical tools like frequency and percentage. The distribution of farmers according to age observed in the present study was 51.7 per cent in middle age, 46.8 per cent in old age and 1.70 per cent in young age groups. Farmers with education of class X and less accounted for 75.88 per cent of respondents while 17.65 per cent were graduates and 4.12 per cent had post-graduation or higher education. Illiterate farmers accounted to 2.35 per cent of respondents. Majority of farmers were from OBC communities (46 %) followed by general (39 %) while SC/ST category accounted for 15 per cent of the respondents. Family size was small (less than 5) in 70.4 per cent of respondents and 27.9 per cent of farmers had medium sized families with 6-10 members. About 1.7 per cent of farmers had large families (more than 10 members). Majority of the respondents maintained small herds (65.8%) while 21.3 per cent had medium sized herds. Large herds were maintained by 12.9 per cent of respondents. Majority of the farmers (40.4%) belonged to medium income group, 33.8 per cent had low income and 25.8 per cent had high income. Most farmers had a landholding between 11 cents and up to one acre (45.08 %). Almost equal proportions of farmers had less than 10 cents (27.98 %) and more than 2 acres (26.94 %). Biogas plant was installed by 14.2 per cent of the respondents.

The present study was conducted to investigate the prevalence of Haemonchus contortus and hematological changes in different age groups of H. contortus affected Nellore brown sheep. A total of 180 Nellore brown sheep flock maintained in an extensive system of grazing were selected randomly. Even though the sheep were dewormed regularly, an outbreak was noticed during May 2020 in Raptadu mandal of Anantapur district, Andhra Pradesh. Eight sheep were found dead in the flock prior to screening. During screening out of 180 sheep, 128 sheep were found normal and were kept as control group and 52 which exhibited clinical signs of anemia, poor growth, emaciation, diarrhea were selected. Blood samples were analyzed for the parameters like hemoglobin concentration (g/dl), Packed cell volume (%), Total erythrocyte count (TEC) and white blood cells (TBC), MCV (fl), MCH(pg), MCHC (g/dl) and compared with normal animals. The infection was confirmed to be due to H. contortus following the recovery of Haemonchus worms at post-mortem. The prevalence of H. contortus was recorded to be 40.9 percent in males (18 out of 44) and 25 percent in females (34 out of 136) with an overall prevalence of 28.89 percent (52 out of 180) in this present study.

A field survey was conducted in Karimnagar, Kamareddy, Jagtial, and Peddapalli districts of Northern Telangana state of India to ascertain the milking management practices followed by dairy farmers and data were collected from randomly selected 240 dairy farmers from 24 villages of 8 mandals belonging to the above 4 newly formed districts through personal interview with the help of a pretested semi-structured questionnaire. The present study revealed that, all the respondents milked their animals twice in a day and followed most of the good milking practices. All the farmers allowed the calf to suckle at both the times, 33.75% of the respondents offered concentrate feed and practiced teat manipulation for milk let down. Most of the farmers milked the animals at the same place by using scientific milking pails and adopted the practice of drying off their dairy animals two months before calving. Most of the respondents didn’t follow teat dipping. Majority of respondents (99.17%) followed cleaning of milking utensils with tap water. Most of respondents sold their milk to village dairy co-operative society and none of the respondents followed testing for mastitis and sealing of teat canal at the end of lactation in their dairy animals. It can be concluded that, there is enough scope in imparting scientific dairy management practices to the farmers in the study area through training programmes and frequent exposure visits to organised dairy farms apart from providing them milk chilling facility in the form of Bulk milk coolers at village level.

A biological experiment was conducted to study the effect of different mating ratio on fertility and hatchability of TANUVAS Namakkal quail-1 breeders. The experiment was conducted by using two hundred and fifty adult birds of the age 15-25 weeks (males:25 and females:125) and 35-45 weeks (males:25 and females:125) TANUVAS Namakkal quail-1 breeders. The different male: female ratios viz. T1 (1:2), T2 (1:3), T3 (1:4), T4 (1:5) and T5 (1:6) were maintained in cages separately. All the birds were reared as per the standard management procedure and fed with Japanese quail breeder diet. The fertile eggs were collected from each male: female ratio separately for 28 days period. Eggs were set in the incubator and per cent hatchability, infertile, embryonic mortality and dead-in-shell were studied. The results of the experiment revealed that the hatchability was highly significant (P<0.01) in T3 group (77.62%) with a mating ratio of 1:4 in 15 to 25 weeks age group and in T2 group (72.83%) with a mating ratio of 1:3 in 35 to 45 weeks age group. From this study it could be concluded that the optimum mating ratio for “TANUVAS NAMAKKAL Quail-1” breeder for younger age group is 1:4 and for older age group is 1:3.

Shrikhand is a traditional fermented dairy product with added nutritional profile. The present study encompasses on analyzing the functional properties viz. phenolic content, antioxidant activity, microbial quality and calorific value of functional shrikhand incorporated with orange fruit peel extract. The statistical analysis inferred that extracts of orange contained phenolic content in the range of 7.78±0.36 to 16.25±0.94 mg/g during storage. The ethanol extracts incorporated functional shrikhand presented higher antioxidant activity (17.74 to 34.25%) than that of aqueous extracts (14.35 to 33.64%) of orange peel. On further comparison, the dried fruit peel extracts offered more TPC and antioxidant activity (16.25±0.94 to 10.85±0.21 and 34.25±0.05 to 22.80±0.31%) than fresh fruit peel extracts (15.85±0.39 to 7.78±0.36 and 28.58±0.15 to 14.35±1.09) respectively. The orange fruit peel incorporated functional shrikhand can be stored up to 15 days at 5°C without affecting the overall sensory acceptability with enhanced antioxidant activity and total phenolic content and it could be used as dairy supplement in human diet.

A clinical case of feline scabies was recorded in an eleven month old male cat. With thick yellow crusty erythematous lesions and alopecia on the head and ears, the skin scrapings revealed positive for Notoedres cati mite. Treatment with two doses of Ivermectin at the rate of 0.2 mg/kg body weight given by subcutaneous route biweekly for a month along with supportive therapy resulted in major improvement in the condition.

A four years old primiparous Jersey crossbreed cow of one-month lactating was presented with swelling of right fore quarter and straw yellow milk. The grade of CMT test on milk was (+++). Klebsiella spp., isolation done by bacteriological culture of milk using blood agar. Plasma fibrinogen and plasma protein ratio was used as an indicator for assessment of recovery. Inj.Gentamicin 5 mg /kg IV & 10 ml intramammary along with supportive therapies were given for 5 days. 12thday post treatment the milk quality drastically improved.

The genetically improved modern commercial layers are capable of producing 330 eggs in their productive life of up to 72 weeks. The journey of genetic improvement continues and the breeding companies now developed ‘long life’ layers that can lay 500 eggs in 100 weeks of age. The changing production dynamics of layer chicken calls for better understanding of nutrient requirements and good nutritional programming. Prediction models are being used to assess the nutrient requirements of the hybrid layers; while, precision feeding of quantity of feed and or nutrients can lower feed costs and ensures more predictable bird performance. In-ovo and early chick nutrition give jump start at juvenile stage of chicken. The idea of split feeding, although beneficial in certain production parameters, suffers the disadvantages of additional infrastructure and workforce requirements. The nutritional programme foregg size, shell quality and feeding for value added designer egg production is aimed at increasing the profit to the farmers. In recent days, feeding for healthy gut that enables efficient digestion and absorption of nutrients has also gained paramount importance. The concept of feed nanotechnology can help in increasing nutrient availability and environment protection; while, phytogenic products can some extent replace the role played by antibiotic growth promoters. The advancements in biotechnology has opened up not only numerous opportunities for the development of products and technologies for poultry feeding, but also to study the influence of nutritional factors on genomics, proteomics and metabolomics.

‘New generation’ Dried Distillers’ Grains with Solubles (DDGS) collected from modern ethanol plants were analysed for its nutritional composition and included in the diet to assess the performance of commercial Vanaraja chickens. Six numbers of commercial ‘new generation’ DDGS samples collected from modern ethanol plants were analyzed for their basic nutrient composition and amino acid profile. Five isocaloric and isonitrogenous experimental diets containing graded levels of ‘new generation’ DDGS (0, 2.5, 5.0, 7.5 and 10% DDGS) were formulated as per ICAR-DPR standards for Vanaraja chickens basis, and fed for chicks (9 replicate pens containing 6 chicks each) of commercial dual purpose birds of Vanaraja strain for the period of 6 weeks. Growth performance of birds was recorded at 7, 14, 21, 35 and 42 days of age and 9 representative birds per treatment (one each from replicate pen) were randomly selected and processed to study their carcass yield and characteristics. The ME and CP content of ‘new generation’ DDGS is 2850±57 Kcal/Kg and 27.35±1.16%, respectively. There was no significant (P>0.05) difference in the growth performance of birds during chick stage (7 to 21 days) and during early finishing stage (35 days) birds fed diets containing ≥5.0% ‘new generation’ DDGS had shown lower weight gain and significantly (P<0.05) poor feed conversion compared to Control. There was no significant difference in the carcass yield and its characteristics between the dietary treatments. Good quality protein rich ‘new generation’ DDGS can be used (10%) in the diets fed to commercial Vanaraja chickens without significant impact on overall performance of birds.

The present investigation was conducted in four districts (Namakkal, Tiruppur, Tirunelveli and Vellore) of Tamil Nadu with an objective to record animal husbandry breeding related ethnoveterinary medicines (EVM) and its scientific rationale. For this two blocks were chosen purposively from each of the selected districts and two villages from each block were selected randomly. Fifteen livestock rearers were selected randomly from each of the villages selected thus making a final sample of 240 livestock farmers. Results of this study revealed that, a total number of five ethno veterinary medicinal practices for anestrum and six EVM practices for retained placenta were adopted by the farmers. Out of these practices, use of half of a coconut and rhizome of viralimanjal (Curcuma longa) of 10 g for 10 days orally to the anestrum cow and feeding of the animals with bamboo leaves for the retained placenta was found to be having highest scientific relevant score of 0.5781 and 0.8437 respectively. On the basis of this study it was recommended that dairy cow owners should be made aware of using these two successful EVM treatment for anestrum and retained placenta after validating  these practices through suitable clinical trials.