The Department of Animal Husbandry Jammu organized a two-day ‘Pashu Mandi’ today at Rinderpest Checkpost-Animal Husbandry Department, Lakhanpur (Kathua). Dr. Shubhra Sharma, Director Animal Husbandry Jammu was the Chief Guest and Rakesh Kumarm Sub Divisional Magistrate, Hiranagar was the Guest of Honour.
Addressing the gathering, Director Animal Husbandry Jammu spoke about the importance of Animal Husbandry and Dairying as a source of income generation to improve living standards of the farming community. She further said that events like these (Pashu-Mandis) serve as an ideal platform to motivate farmers to keep and breed superior livestock for profitable dairy farming.
She emphasized that the main objective of the department behind organizing such events is to increase the influx of superior cattle into Jammu and Kashmir aimed at enhancing local milk production as well as improving germplasm of local non descript cattle population thus bringing prosperity to our dairy farmers.
The event witnessed huge participation of local livestock farmers as well as livestock sellers who had come from neighbouring states along with their livestock. Local farmers were also seen purchasing cattle from these livestock sellers. Majority of the local farmers who had come to purchase cattle were beneficiaries of flagship scheme of Animal Husbandry Department, Integrated Dairy Development Scheme(IDDS) which envisages subsidy upto 50 percent cost for purchase of cattle units.
The farmers present expressed gratitude towards the department of Animal Husbandry Jammu for facilitating their purchase of dairy cattle in a very organized manner at Lakhanpur itself as earlier they had to visit outside the UT of Jammu and Kashmir for this purpose.
Farmers also appreciated this effort as it was very convenient to inquire about the fitness status of the cattle kept for sale through a team of doctors deployed for the purpose and hoped that such events shall be organized on a regular basis in future too.