Comparative analysis of management practices of calves of dairy animals under organic and non-organic farming system

Dairy farming provides livelihood and nutritional security to the vast majority of families throughout rural India. In this livelihood system dairy calves play a very important role as most of the farming families carefully raise the young calves to become efficient producers in terms of milk or as a source of drought power. For organic farmers, the necessity of proper calf management assumes more importance due to restrictions on diet choice and also due to more stress on welfare -based animal rearing. In this context, the present study was undertaken in Uttarakhand, one of the leading states in organic farming, as a part of a larger study on dairy -based organic farming. A number of organic and non -organic farmers compulsorily have either cattle, buffalo, or goats as dairy animals or any combination of these enterprises, selected as per the sampling plan presented in the main text, and were surveyed, Calf management practices were studied from the context of recommended practices of organic farmers. It was found that variation existed between organic and non -organic farmers in plain and hilly regions and also for different species of dairy animals. Keeping the calf separate from the respective mother was the most common practice at least for a few days after birth. Mutilation practices like castration were higher in hilly regions irrespective of the farming system especially for cattle than in buffalo. Disbudding was also practiced by many organic farmers in violation of organic standards. Under miscellaneous management practices, colostrum feeding after birth was found to be followed by all organic farmers in plain and hilly regions. Also, the paper shed some light on varied probability (increasing or decreasing) of practicing/ compliance to various calf management practices if farmers moved from non -organic to organic farming. The calf mortality pattern between organic and non -organic management was not found to be significantly different.