A crossbred cow down from 15 to 11 litres, and ₹1,200 to spend
Kamla Devi of Sitapur keeps one crossbred cow (Holstein Friesian × Sahiwal), 4 years old, in her second lactation, calved 70 days ago and weighing about 400 kg. Milk yield was 15 litres a day in the first month and has fallen to 11 litres at 3.6 per cent fat. The cow gets 7 kg of wheat straw, 5 kg of green fodder (maize and berseem mixed) and 2 kg of a home-made concentrate of mustard cake and wheat bran; water is offered twice a day. She has not been dewormed since calving and no mineral mixture is given. Her coat looks dull, and a heat was missed 25 days ago. Concentrate costs ₹28/kg, milk sells at ₹38 per litre and the local veterinary officer charges ₹200 per visit. The family needs at least 14 litres a day to cover a loan instalment and has ₹1,200 spare this month.
1. Diagnose why yield has fallen and calculate how much concentrate the cow actually needs. Which checks must come before any increase in feed?
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The likely cause is a simple energy and protein deficit, but confirm it before pouring feed.
Concentrate requirement. A practical rule for a crossbred cow is about 1.5 kg of concentrate for maintenance of a 400 kg animal, plus 1 kg for every 2.5 litres of milk. At 11 litres: 11 ÷ 2.5 = 4.4 kg, plus 1.5 kg maintenance = about 6 kg a day. She is feeding 2 kg, a shortfall of roughly 4 kg. Green fodder at 5 kg is also far below the 25–30 kg a cow of this size should get; wheat straw at 7 kg is acceptable as the dry roughage but carries almost no protein or energy. This combination explains a steady fall from 15 to 11 litres with a dull coat.
Checks before increasing feed:
- Udder and milk: feel all four quarters, look for flakes or clots, and do a California Mastitis Test. Chronic subclinical mastitis is a common cause of a quiet fall in yield and must be treated, not fed away.
- Dung and appetite: loose dung or undigested grain suggests rumen acidosis and means the concentrate must be raised slowly, not sharply.
- Water: twice a day is too little for a milking cow; she should have clean water available at all times.
- Parasites and minerals: no deworming since calving and no mineral mixture are both gaps.
- The missed heat suggests she was cycling but was not detected; that is a management issue, not a feeding one.
2. How should she spend the ₹1,200 this month? Give the order of spending and the reasoning, including how fast to raise the concentrate.
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Order of spending, cheapest gain first:
- Deworming (about ₹150–250). A worm burden reduces feed conversion; treating it makes every rupee of feed work better, and she has not been dewormed since calving.
- Mineral mixture, about 2–3 kg (₹250–350), fed at 50–100 g a day, plus common salt at about 50 g a day. Mineral deficiency shows exactly as she looks - dull coat, poor fertility, depressed yield - and it is far cheaper than extra concentrate.
- Buy green fodder (₹300–400). Ten to fifteen extra kilos a day of berseem or maize for a fortnight costs less per unit of energy than concentrate and lifts the rumen immediately.
- Then, and only then, extra concentrate with what is left. Keep back about ₹200 for a veterinary visit if there is no response within two weeks.
How to raise it: never jump from 2 kg to 6 kg overnight - that risks acidosis, off-feed and a further fall in milk. Increase by about 500 g every 4–5 days, split the concentrate into two feeds after milking, and watch the dung and the milk yield at each step. Stop the increase when the extra feed no longer pays for itself, i.e. when an added kilo of concentrate is no longer producing about 1.5 litres of milk.
Economics of the response: 1 kg of concentrate at ₹28 is worth buying only if it yields at least about 0.75 litres at ₹38; the usual response of 1.5 litres gives ₹57 against ₹28, so it is a clear gain.
3. Apply the numbers: if she reaches four extra litres a day, does it pay? What should she do if there is no response in three weeks?
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The arithmetic. The 4 kg concentrate shortfall costs 4 × ₹28 = ₹112 a day. Four extra litres at ₹38 add ₹152 a day, and if the response is six litres it adds ₹228. Net gain is therefore ₹40 to ₹116 a day, roughly ₹1,200 to ₹3,500 a month, which covers the loan instalment she is worried about. The extra fodder and mineral mixture cost a little more, but even so the response pays for itself many times over. A milk response to better feeding normally appears within 10–15 days, so three weeks is a fair trial period.
If there is no response in three weeks, stop adding feed and investigate in this order:
- Re-examine the udder for chronic mastitis and get the milk checked; a treated quarter recovers yield only after the infection clears.
- Check the quality of the mustard cake - mouldy or aflatoxin-contaminated cake depresses intake and yield, and no amount of it will help.
- Check water supply, ventilation and heat stress; a crossbred cow in a hot, closed shed will not respond to feed.
- Re-check her body condition and teeth; a cow that cannot chew cud efficiently wastes the ration.
- Accept the ceiling. If all of these are right, she is an 11-litre cow this lactation, and the answer is not more feed but better fat and solids-not-fat through balanced feeding, a realistic calving interval, and a decision at the next breeding about whether she earns her keep.
Record keeping: write down the daily milk yield, the feed offered and the date of every heat on a wall chart. Without the heat record the missed heat will be repeated, and each missed cycle adds about 21 days of dry period and lost income.