Interventions to sustain dairy production and productivity in changing climate of Namakkal district, Tamil Nadu

Dairy animals play a major role in livelihood of farming community in Namakkal district of Tamil Nadu. But continuous reduction in average rainfall of 854.95 mm between 1995-2005, 777.47mm between 2006-2014 and 708.04mm between 2015-2019 due to climate change causes severe drought and drought results in scarcity of available pasture and fodder and decline in dairy animal population from 2.85lakhs in 18th livestock census, 2009 to 2.49 in 19th livestock census, 2014 in Namakkal district. Also, dairy animals become susceptible for heat stress, prone to vector borne diseases and affect the reproductive performances. Hence, suitable interventions to improve the performance of dairy animals in summer and hot humid seasons were introduced. It  was found that though the temperature humidity index persisted almost similar over the years (2012 – 2018) and induced moderate heat stress ranged between 80 – 83, the productivity of animal increased from 4.1lt to 6.15lt in summer and 4.15lt to 6.59lt in hot humid season by adopting the climate resilient interventions. The productive and reproductive performance of the dairy animals indicated that housing, feeding and health management interventions improved the lactation yield from 945 lts to 2103 lts with 7.41 to 9.85 months lactation length though the average maximum temperature in summer from 2012 – 2018 was 39.170c. Even in drought and crop failure times, farmers could get stable income of Rs.2270/month/animal through milk and manure of cow by adopting scientific dairy housing and feeding management practices like thatched roof sheds, trees around the sheds for good ventilation, green fodder cultivation and feeding (15-20kg/day/animal), balanced low cost concentrate feed, mineral mixture (40gms/day/animal) along with Sodium bicarbonate (50gms/day/animal) feeding and adlibitum good quality drinking water (70lt – 90lt/day/animal).