Socio-economic profile of Kalyana Gidda cattle rearing farmers of Northern Karnataka

The study was conducted among 60 farmers to know the socio economic status of the farmers owning Kalyana Gidda cattle in Raichur and Yadgir districts of Northern Karnataka and they were exposed to a structured interview schedule. The study found that the family type of the respondents was majorly joint type and most of the respondents were in middle age category, followed by old age and young age category. It was found that majority of the farmers had no education followed by primary education and large majority of the respondents had agriculture as their primary occupation followed by agricultural labour, business and animal husbandry. It was evident from the results that the majority of the farmers had animal husbandry (66.66 %) as secondary occupation. A considerable size (35 %) of the respondents belonged to small farmers category, followed by 33.33, 18.33, 8.33, and 5 % of respondents belonged to medium, marginal, large and landless category, respectively. The family income of most of the farmers (70 %) was below Rs. 40,000 followed by Rs. 40,000 to Rs. 80,000 (23.33 %) and only 6.67 % of them had higher income (>Rs. 80,000). It was observed that the average breeding bull holding by the farmers in the study area was higher in Yadgir block followed by Devadurga, Lingasugur and Surapur. Similar trend was observed for male and female calves holding. The average milking female holding was highest in Devadurga block followed by Yadgir, the female holding of Surpur and Lingasurgur was lesser. Similar trend was observed for bullock holding. The average milk yield recorded among all blocks was 2.27 L/day/cow in Kalyana Gidda cows.