Jaffarabadi buffaloes

Origin & Breeding Tract:

Jaffarabadi buffaloes are good milkers and thrive well on natural grazing. These buffaloes characteristically differ from other breeds mainly in terms of kilo fat. They are very efficient in the conversion of roughages into milk with a high butter fat content. Males are good draught animals for hauling heavy loads.

Jaffarabadi is the heaviest of all the Indian breeds of buffaloes. It is also called as Bhavnagri, Gir or Jaffari. The breed is named after the town of Jaffarabad. These buffaloes are found in large numbers in this area, especially in the Gir forest area which is also inhabited by the famous Indian lion.

The main native tract of Jaffarabadi buffalo is Saurashtra region of Gujarat especially areas in and around Gir forest viz., Junagarh, Bhavanagar, Jamnaagar, Porbandhar, Amreli and Rajkot districts. The breeding tract lies between 20° 5’ and 22° 6’ N latitude, and between 70° and 72° E longitude. Jaffarabadi buffaloes are distributed approximately in an area of 64,339 square kilometres excluding the Kutch region. Soil in the breeding tract is salty clay to clay and typically medium black, with high water holding capacity. Climate in general is tropical monsoon. Rain is common during June to September and the annual rainfall ranges from 50 to 100cm.Average temperature ranges from 20° to 36° C (Anonymous, 2000).

Physical Characteristics:

Some of the important characteristics is described as follows: -

Body color	The usual colour of the animals is black but few animals having grey colour or white spotes on forehand, feet and tail switch are also seen.
Horns	The horns are inclined to droop on each side of the neck and then turn up at the tips, the curls being not as tight as in the Murrah breed. The horns usually emerge out by compressing the head, go downward sideways, upward and finally forming a ring like structure.
Marking	Rarely white markings on forehead,feet and tail switch may be there.
Eye	Horns makes eyes to look small, termed as sturdy eye, and especially in males, sometimes it leads to blindness.
Tail	Medium in size
Body	The adult Jaffrabadi animals have usually long massive and comparatively compact and fat body.
Head	Head is big and massive.Forehead is prominent being convex in 86.42% adult animal (Tajane and Dutta, 1998). The bone of forehead is wide and covers the eyes partially to give characteristic “Sleepy Eyes” appearance, especially in adult males.
Face
Neck	Neck is broad and thick
Ear	Ears are long and horizontal.
Limbs
Skin
Udder	Udder is well developed. Pendulous and round udders are found in almost equal proportions. Forequarter is slightly larger than the hindquarter.
Teats	Teats are mostly funnel shaped and have pointed tips. Milk vein is medium in size.

Housing & Management Practices

Housing

               

Most of the farmers provide some type of housing during day, night, day and night and no housing was 9.98%, 26.68%, 62.97% and 0.45% respectively. Inside the forest areas, the Maldharis keep their animals in “Nesdas” where the animal house forms a part of the farmers’s house and is heavily barricaded in front to protect the animals from lions and other wild animals. Buffaloes are normally allowed for wallowing. Wallowing is done during morning (31.17%), noon (56.82%) and evening (10.01%)(Anonymous, 2000).

Feeding

As Jaffarabadi buffaloes are massive, they are heavy grazers. They are maintained on normal pastures throughout the year. The commonly available fodder trees in the breeding tract are Samanca saman, Acacia nilotica, Prosopis juliflora, Ficus bengalensis, etc. The major native fodder grasses available are Cyanodon, Dicanthium, Aristidda, Eleuropus and Desmodium.

                  

The buffaloes are normally fed concentrate mixture during pregnancy and lactation. The mixture contains groundnut cake, cottonseed, cottonseed cake and compound (pelleted) feed. The main green fodder fed to Jaffarabadi buffaloes are maize, sorghum, groundnut fodder, sugarcane tops and lucerne, whereas dry fodder comprises sorghum, maize stalks, groundnut husk., groundnut hnulls, wheat straw, wheat bhusa, etc. About 44.12% and 45.45% farmers grow green fodder in winter and summer seasons respectively. Only 11.78% farmers provide chaffed fodder to the animals. Most of the farmers (62.55%) fed cake as supplement along with fodder and only 15.19% provided concentrate mixture to the lactating animals. Before feeding, the concentrate is soaked by majority of the farmers (80.8%) and is fed during milking time.

Breeding

Most of the farmers in the breeding tract of jaffarabadi buffaloes resort to natural service rather than artificial insemination. Natural service is followed in 88.33% of the cases and only 11.66% of the farmers are adopting artificial insemination. However, the availability of breeding bulls in the tract is found to be inadequate as they comprise only 1.45 of the breedable female population.