LDDB sets up 150 milk cooling centres

Lahore: Livestock and Dairy Development Board (LDDB) has set up 150 milk cooling centres across the country to improve the milk collection and marketing to enable the small and landless dairy farmers to avail of better marketing opportunities and adoption of improved technologies.

Out of these, 60 milk cooling centres have been set up in Punjab; 33 in NWFP; 12 in Northern Areas; 21 in Sindh; 13 in Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK); and 11 in Balochistan. These centres are taking care of 6,000 families.

LDDB Project Director Syed Hassan Raza, who was present in the provincial metropolis, told Business Recorder on Friday that the Board had so far provided 62 tonnes of better quality fodder seed, 400 tonnes of balanced ration for animals and also trained 300 youths of those areas where these plants had been installed to extend veterinary services to these farmers groups.

Another batch of 25 such young men would pass out from the University of Veterinary and Animal Sciences on February 28, Syed Hassan Raza added. He said that the Board was also running a progeny-testing programme to produce high quality bulls. He said that the Buffalo Research Institute (BRI), Pattoki, and similar type of institutions in Sahiwal and Jhang had been strengthened by giving technical support, equipment or removing the shortage of staff.

Under this programme, quality bulls would be produced for Sahiwal cattle and Nili-Ravi buffaloes in Punjab, he said. In Sindh, progeny-testing programme for Red Sindhi (cattle) and Kundhi (buffalo) breeds had been initiated and the Board was working with over 10,000 animals, he said. The LDDB Project Director said that under another programme of 'production of quality breeding animals,' the Board had registered some 350 progressive livestock farmers with it.

The progressive dairy breeds would be assisted under this component to produce better quality animals, he said. He said these breeds would be required to maintain production data and would be provided capacity building in various aspects of dairy farming, support for fodder production, technical support for silage/hay making, provision of services like health cover and to facilitate sale of quality heifers and future breeding bulls, he added.

He said that the Board had received a very positive response from the farmers as all these projects were aimed at increasing milk production and the Board provided them with complete guidance. He said that in the country, farmers had animals, but they lacked in know-how as to how to make it a commercial activity.