Economics of Fertility Management of Small Holding Dairy Farms in Bangladesh

Considering different fertility traits 411 cows from 73 farms used for economic analyses. From these, 202 lactating cows were selected for evaluating the fertility status. Pre-tested data sheets were used to record the socioeconomic status of the farms including their assets, cost and return and productive and reproductive performance of the dairy cows. Targets were set considering the situations prevailing in Zebu and their crosses rearing countries. The best 20% of local farms were chosen during setting the targets. Delay at first calving caused a significant loss (P < 0.01) of Tk. 11051 (135.04 USD)/farm/year. The farms would have had the opportunity to earn in average Tk. 22236 (171.73 USD) more/year if they could attain the targeted milk production. The opportunity from milk production had a significant effect on total farm earning. The milk production cost was Tk. 11.70 (0.14 USD)/litre .The average lactation length was 246.1 days in con-trast to the target of 304 days. The farms were suffering from a significant (P < 0.05) loss of Tk. 5651 (69.05 USD)/year due to shorter lactation length. The calf mortality was 30.33% resulting in a loss of Tk. 304 (3.71 USD)/farm/year. In 46 artificial inseminations (AI) the first service conception rate was 51%. The overall conception rate and services per conception was 50% and 2.0, respectively. The days open was found to be of 164.03 days. The main problems of the small holding dairy farms were delayed age at first calving, low milk production, high production cost, low milk to concentrate feed ratio and poor reproduc-tive performance. Farmer’s income would have increased by about Tk. 39493 (482.62 USD)/far year, if the control measures of different reproductive and productive indices could be substantially improved through veterinary herd health control programme.