TNN | Jul 26, 2013, 04.15 AM IST

MUKTSAR:Punjab government recently sent a delegation of progressive dairy farmers to Israel to get them acquainted with modern techniques under the initiative "intensive dairy cattle production training programme". A 10-member delegation of dairy farmers and experts was exposed to latest techniques in Israel with a view to enhancing promotion of allied agricultural activity and supplementing income.

Muktsar deputy director (dairy) Karnail Singh, who was part of the delegation, said, "We visited many large, modern dairy farms in Israel and got information about latest techniques used by dairy farmers there." 

He said that dairy farms in Israel are either owned by cooperatives and by individuals or families locally known as Kibbutz and Moshav, respectively. In Israel, there are 776 family-owned dairy farms, each with 50 to 200 Holstein Frisian (HF) cows. In the cooperative farms, strength of cows varies from 200 to 1,000 and there are 163 Kibbutz farms in Israel. Karnail said that each cow produces an average 11,667 litres of milk per lactation period and per day milk yield per animal is 38 litres. "Dairy farmers of Israel send those cows to slaughter houses whose average yield decreases," he said. Karnail said weather conditions of Israel are similar to Punjab, still they make special arrangement to control heat stress.

"Solar power systems are installed in each cattle shed to generate electricity for farm needs. All dairy farms in Israel are computerized and every information like fat, protein in milk and fodder quality is noted. Farms are fully mechanized and manual labour intervention is limited. We would also promote such techniques in Punjab to increase per capita milk," the deputy direction stated.​