1Senior Research Fellow, Department of Extension Education, Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana-141004
2Deputy Director, KVK, Ropar
3Professor of Sociology, Department of Economics and Sociology, Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana-141004
The present investigation aimed at exploring the knowledge level of the dairy farmers. The ex-post-facto research design was selected for the study. A list of farmers was procured from Krishi Vigyan Kendrasof Bathinda, Sri Muktsar Sahib and Mansa districts of Punjab. Out of the list, twenty trained farmers and an equal matching sample of 20 untrained dairy farmers was chosen by random sampling technique from these three selected districts. Hence, 60 trained and 60 untrained dairy farmers constituted the total sample of 120 farmers for the study. Knowledge was defined as the degree to which the factual information was possessed by the dairy farmers regarding recommended dairy management practices. Results indicated farmers more than 75 percent respondents had knowledge regarding important cross breeds of cows, estrous cycle, mucus discharge a heat symptom, amount of colostrums given to calf on the basis of body weight The difference analysis revealed that major differences in the knowledge of the trained and untrained dairy farmers was found to be in time taken to drop placenta, frozen semen bank of murrah buffalo, amount of concentrated mixture for pregnant dairy animal, balance feeding, dimensions of silage pits, symptoms of mastitis, cure of injured teats, right time to vaccinate against FMD, and right milking method. The overall analysis of the knowledge level revealed that majority of the trained and untrained dairy farmers (66.67 and 58.33 percent) had medium knowledge level regarding improved dairy management practices.
Expost facto, knowledge, random sampling, training programme
