Pure ... untouched by human hand.....straight from the udder world....cartoon by D.Sampath..

I am a good strategy consultant....

So when it came to the question of running a dairy I was clear about the guiding principles for its economic success...

Principle 1.......Select cows on the basis of their milking capacity (check personally), breed and health

Principle 2.......Impregnation timing is very important so that the period when the cow does not yield milk is reduced.

Principle 3.......Feed only your jersey cows with high milk yield on costly cattle feed ,rest low yielding cows can be managed with the feed from the grass in the farm.

Principle 4........Investing on technology for extra hyegine and milking is not viable

Principle 5.......Do not get attached to the animals as you may have to dispose of non profitable animals...

 Along with the .back breaking, break even calculations ,I had documented these principles on my excel sheet. With a sense of professional pride and achievement I wanted to share this with Beena....after all I was a master in my job...

“Beena I want to tell.....”

“Raju look at this?” she was excited about some thing...

She showed me a picture of two jersey cows from the book the “Dairy Today”...

I saw two gentle jersey cows grazing. They were looking at us with soulful eyes. (By this time I had developed the ability to differentiate between a local cow and a jersey cow...)

 “Achooooooo...look at the udder”

“Got cold Beena”...

  she is having a bad cold...  I was wondering which is the “other “she is referring to ......

 “What are you talking....?? I am asking you to look at their size”

  Both cows were of an average size

She looked at me and said

“What are you looking at?”

"The cows “

“I said Look at the udder”

Oh! The udder... (Oh! Oh! No problem of cold... She meant “udder”)

“Yeah!  Yeah! The udder of course... a lot of it I see...”

“We should buy cows with big udders”

I realised that her strategic approach for buying a cow is going to be very different from the principle one enumerated by me...

Still I made a feeble attempt

“Beena let us look at the milking history, breed and also the teeth of the ....”

“Raju.... I am going to buy all of them with big udders...they will all give very good milk”

 “But Beena .....” I paused.....

I looked at my excel sheet in my comp and the udder and sighed

“Yes Raju”

“Nothing ma”

I went back to the computer... Deleted the first principle about selection of cows....Pressed ...SAVE   and typed    BEENA’S DAIRY FARM.....

Lakshmi, Saraswati (both of them Jersey cows) Kali, Durga and Mallika (all of them Desi cows) were introduced to me by Nagraj. All of them were milking cows.

“Beena...   We have a problem”

“Yes Raju”

“All of them will stop yielding at the same time and you will have problem of continuity of milk supply...”

“Oh I am planning to get some cows ready for impregnation”

“Beena before that let us understand how to impregnate these cows...”

‘Nagraj tells me the village vetenary officer will come and impregnate them”

I could not believe my ears... I thought only bulls could do the job....or do they have bulls in the officer grade ....I have heard of many who do bull shitting but not this.....

“How can he impregnate???  I mean come on... Jokes apart... Come on Beena ....please be serious”

  “Yes Raju ....he will bring frozen semen from a bull and impregnate the cow when the animal is in heat...”

“Oh ... I see”

 I was relieved...

Vaishnavi.  Narayani and Janaki came into our stable. Beena had built a stable with feeder and water and all facilities to make their stay comfortable...Arumuagam, the vetenary officer was a very positive man. In the next four months he used all his technology of impregnation and still did not meet with  success.

 “Arumugam.... why are the cows not getting pregnant?”

"It is all up to him sir"

“Upto whom”

“The god sir”

 Though there are stories that the lord pashupathi in the Hindu mythology and Zeus in the Greek mythology had taken the form of bull to come and have conjugal relation with cows... I could not see the role of gods in this unsuccessful attempt of Arumaugam.

 “Arumugam something must be wrong with the quality of the semen”

“From Hoskote farm if you get the semen directly for impregnation of the cows, then chances of success are very good sir”

 I later found out that the semen has to be fresh and also in a deep frozen condition... the frozen semen was transported from Hoskote farm to the village vetenary hospital (which again I found did not have a deep freezer but only a refrigerator where the deep freezer was not functioning...)... we organised for a special freezer flask and carried the semen directly from the hoskote farm  ....So we realised that to coordinate between the heat time of the cow, the village vetenary officer’s availability and Hoskote breeding farm.. Was not going to be very easy...all these had delayed the impregnation by almost five months...my excel calculations have gone for a toss...

I went to the excel sheet “Beena dairy farm “and deleted the second principle about speedy impregnation and getting the cows into milking readiness.

Pressed “SAVE “and typed ”ME AND  BEENA’S DAIRY FARM”

Nagraj was feeding the jersey and local cows...

I found that he was giving high quality cattle feed to all of them

My principle clearly said Desi cows with poor yield will not be viable if they have a daily feast of costly cattle feed...

“Beena “I shouted

  “Why are you feeding the desi cows also same costly cattle feed??”

“Raju, if I have two kids, can I differentiate them in the matter of giving food?”

“But Beena that is different... This is to make money we have to follow some principles”

She had already started discussing something with Nagraj about the cows’ health....

 In my strategy workshops I ask people to voice their human values and most of them talk about non discrimination among human beings...(one of the values they would like to live by come what may)....I talk to them passionately about not discriminating between people....

She is articulating a bovine value which is equally valid....do not discriminate between animals

My only choice is to go back to my excel and delete the third principle about variable treatment of Desi and jersey cows....

The bespectacled man was giving a sales pitch to beena...

“Madame you are one of the most educated professional dairy in the south. My vice president would like to meet you...to make you the most hygienic and most productive diary we have a wonderful concept called milking machine... Madame ....invest  just only 65,000 rs. You can milk easily upto 15 cows with that...and you know upto the last drop... Madame you don’t have to buy the machine just try it free... If you do not find it useful we will take it back....”

Beena was preening and I realised that before she decides I have to intervene...

I took Beena aside

“Is it necessary to buy milking machine   Beena?”

“Nagraj is finding it very difficult to manage the milking and when he falls sick there is no one who can milk the cows... Also Raju this can avoid “Mastitis” (a disease of the udder) and the productivity also will be up by 15 percent...so I have decided to buy this ... otherwise how can we expand Raju... once Our cows give rise to bachchas then how do we milk them.. ”

“But Beena have you seen any dairy farmer with ten cows having a milking machine...”

“But Raju have you seen any professional educated dairy farmer like me”

The die is cast..... The bespectacled sales guy has already done the damage...

I told myself when I reach home I will have to access my excel  and delete the fourth principle which is ‘high technology will not be viable for Indian dairy farmers’.

 I was woken by the excited voice of Beena

“Raju vaishnavi has given birth to a baby”

Who is Vaishnavi?  None of my friend’s wives were expecting. It must be her cousin from Kerala...

“Oh your cousin  ... is it?”

‘What nonsense..... I am talking about our farm cow Vaishanavi.”

“Oh oh .....”

 It was celebration time... As the calf was a female... (Farmers keep the calf if it is a female, as within a year they will come to heat and be ready for impregnation).We were very happy. But I found that the production of milk had not gone up even with vaishnavi beginning to yield... I asked Nagraj He said Amma has given instruction that the first priority of milk was the calf...After feeding the calf he said not much was left...

I was aghast ....one of the corollaries of the principles of success in a dairy was that you give limited milk to the calf and the rest you take for sale. .otherwise the calf will get most of the benefits...Beena was livid when I suggested that she should reduce the milk being given to the young one

“Raju the first priority for the milk is for the kid. Any mother knows that.  Only when it is satisfied we can take the remaining. And after all if the kid grows healthy then it will give very  good milk....”

Beena was running a value based dairy...articulating and living by her bovine values....

Narayani and janaki also gave birth to babies. Narayani was the mother of a female and janaki gave birth to a male..... The intelligent dairy farmer sells the male as it will not yield milk and you have to take care of it for a long period of time before it turns into a useful desi bull for carrying out some ploughing and field operations...most of the people send the young males to a butcher...Beena refused to sell the male.... Her contention was that she needed the bull for ploughing operations in the field... The real reason I would suspect is that she could not imagine it ending up at butchers....

Then one day tragedy stuck us.... we had a call from Nagaraj   that Vaishnavi has been bitten by a snake and its body was getting swollen up. We immediately rushed to the farm with vetenary doctors but we could not save the big animal...  This upset Beena very much...She loved her animals   deeply...what with the struggle of impregnation, Mastitis , the meaninglessness of selling the male  and to top it all ,the death of a big animal and the struggle we had later to dispose of its carcass...I was very disturbed and was under great tension....

All this was increasing my blood pressure....

I went back to the excel and deleted the principle  about 'do not fall in love with your animals’ 
I pressed the “SAVE” button and typed “ME” when I heard Beena’s voice...

“ Raju”

“Yes ma”

“Don’t you feel bad?”

 I was keeping tag on the profitability and still I was quite content at this stage with the figure of a profit of rs 7500 per month...

“I am quite happy ma”

“What!! How can you be so cruel?”

 I did not understand... I thought I had conveyed that she was dong a pretty good job...

“Aren’t you feeling sorry for Vaishnavi and the poor calf?”

These are times when you just keep quiet as you do not know where all this is leading to...

 “I am thinking of selling the milking machine......”

“Huh.”   Still unclear as to where she is leading me.....

Then it dawned on me... She is packing up... Release for me from all tensions....

I should not show this outside as she would misunderstand. So I gave a stunned look and Managed a guttural “Oh how sad”. Inside I was feeling good that I do not have to delete principle After principle. I can delete the whole excel sheet.But my relief was only short lived

“Don’t worry Raju I will convert the stable into a poultry shed and we will start a poultry farm.

From the frying pan to fire....

However the experience gave me a deep insight into the psychology of an average dairy farmar and the ways and means of helping him to increase his /her productivity...No doubt  NDRI (national diary research institute)must have heard from one of my well wisher like you, my experience and when they had organised a great get to gether of dairy farmers, they invited me to give a lecture on “how to make your return on  investment form dairy farm”...my antagonism towards the milking machine I believe sent shivers in the manufacturer’s spine as could be seen from the one page ad they had released on the advantages of technology in the dairy industry showcasing their milking machine...

Don’t they look like Vaishnavi and the little calf..... sketch by D Sampath