The Super spreader of World-class Cattle Genetics in India
Godrej Agrovet was contemplating setting up a state of the art dairy farm for a long time. It ultimately became a reality in 2017 when Godrej Maxximilk Private Limited came in being with the help of two passionate Israeli scientists. The farm has grown leaps and bounds ever since, in scale, as it is almost 1000 animals strong; but more importantly in terms of genetic potential and its replicability within the premises of Godrej Maxximilk farm and elsewhere.
In 2020-21, we reached many milestones. We touched single day highest production of 10,000 kg, the average yield per milking cow touched a highest of 25 kg and 5 of our champion cows touched 60+ kg single day milk production. This was the proof for scientific and holistic approach that we took towards dairy farming integrating genetics with good management and proper nutrition. However, these are milestones and not an end in themselves. The challenge this year was to improve further while also ensuring success story of our farm gets replicated in the field.
Building the pool
The key first step to becoming potential source of good genetics is to create of pool of animals with recorded performance history. Creating an elite pool of cows is a cumbersome and time taking process. In the four years of our existence, we have focused on building this pool. As a result, our farm now boasts of 200+ animals which have recorded potential of 9000+ kg milk in a lactation for Holstein Frisian and 7000 kg+ in case of Jersey. If this is combined with the proven bulls available in market, our farm can potentially produce 1000 embryos per month with more than 10000 kg per lactation yield potential.
Pushing the potential
The world of cattle genetics is dynamic and so are we. We have regularly upgraded our standards to better our records and push ourselves further towards global benchmarks (Fig. 1).
The key here is the identification of the right selection criteria and following and upgrading it. The regular upgradation ensures that the advantage gained is bettered further and we stay ahead.
Quality genetics for all
Breeding is time and resource consuming process. The efforts being made at our farm had to reach common farmers. That, in fact, was the real challenge for us. Dr. B B Chavan, a well know dairy farmer from Aurangabad in Maharashtra was our first customer for heifers. In the first lactation itself, his heifers are all set to yield around 9000 kg milk. Dr. Chavan finds everything very satisfying and as per expectations as a customer. We have made all efforts to bring a little bit of Godrej Maxximilk to a common farmer. We transferred about 1000+ embryos combined at our farm and at clients’ farms last financial year. And we are all geared up for much higher numbers this year. “We expect good genetics to become accessible and affordable for a common dairy farmer so that it can multiply further and influence the whole dairy ecosystem positively. We have invested in Embryo transfer technology because it can speed things up and farmers can make same genetic progress in 3-4 years for their herds which otherwise would take more than 10 years” said Sandeep Kumar Singh, CEO of Godrej Maxximilk.
Not just genetics!
Our idea is to enable a common farmer in more than one ways. The ability of a farmer to exploit the potential of cattle is also dependent of the accessibility of quality technical services. We have built a team of veterinarians, farm management professionals and para-vets with diverse expertise in breeding, nutrition and farm management. We work with farmers to improve their farms and practices with our expertise so they can handle good genetics with ease.
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