Effects of Non-genetic Factors on Production and Reproduction Traits in Tharparkar Cattle under Arid Region of Rajasthan

Tharparkar is one of the important milch breed of cattle for the arid western region of India, which has the capacity to withstand harsh desert climatic conditions and has high thermo-tolerance gene (Bhat et al., 2016) with better reproductive efficiency and milk production.

The present investigation was undertaken on 422 lactation record of 95 cows spread over 30 years from 1990 to 2020, available at ICAR-Central Arid Zone Research Institute, Jodhpur (Rajasthan). Various lactation and reproduction traits in Tharparkar cattle were analysed by using Linear Mixed Model methodology.

The overall least-square means were 1803.05±31.59 litre for 305-days lactation yield, 1915.38±36.87 litre for total lactation yield (TLY) in 313.12±4.28 days of lactation length (LL). The peak yield (PY) was 10.29±0.12 litre and days to attain peak yield was 68.12±2.16 days of calving. The least-square means of dry period (DP) and calving interval (CI) were 114.23±4.81 and 427.01±5.49 days, respectively. Significant improvement in production and reproduction traits was observed may be due to selection of high yielding animals and improving management condition of herd. Rigid culling of animals should be followed after 5^th lactation onwards to make the dairy farm profitability. Non-significant effect of season of calving indicated the adaptive character against the extreme climatic conditions of the arid zone.