An investigation was carried out in Karimnagar, Kamareddy, Jagtial, and Peddapalli districts of Northern Telangana to evaluate the dairy herd structure, species owned and socio-economic profile of dairy farmers through survey and personal interview with the help of a pretested semi-structured questionnaire. Data were collected from 240 dairy farmers randomly selected from 24 villages of 8 mandals in 4 districts. The study revealed that non-remunerative price for milk (69.17%) was the main constraint followed by repeat breeding problems in dairy cattle (62.08%), distant location of veterinary hospital (61.25%), lack of own capital (49.58%), non-availability of green fodders round the year (47.08%), lack of irrigation facilities (45.84%) and high construction cost (32.92%). A few farmers in the study area identified high cost of veterinary medicine (26.25%), non-availability of veterinarian / paravet (22.08%) and lack of knowledge in clean milk production (15.83%) as major constraints. The results of the study indicated that capacity building of stake holders is to be framed and conducted to educate and create awareness on production of value-added milk products, good dairy husbandry practices, especially about feeding, breeding and health care. Frequent infertility treatment camps should be organized at village and crossbred animals should be made available from government farms at a reasonable price. Milk chilling facility should be provided at village level and periodical visits to modern dairy farms may help them to optimize productivity from dairy animals so that they get round the year remunerative prices from the produced milk.
Constraints, Dairy farmer, Districts, Telangana
