Effect of various agro-climatic factors on production, reproduction and growth traits in Hardhenu cattle

Introduction

Globally, the livestock industry is highly dynamic and evolving in developing countries in response to the ever-increasing demand for livestock products. Livestock is important in India in many ways, including wealth handling, generation of employment, insurance, recycling of waste and leftovers from crops and agriculture industries, improvement of soil structure and fertility, and pest control. Globally, the livestock sector is seen as an ideal approach for the issue of food insecurity (Braun, 2010) [45] . India has the world's largest cattle population, but its per animal average milk produced is very low in comparison to developed nations. There are 193.46 million (36.04%) cattle, with approximately 51.35 million (26.5%) crossbred cattle (20 th Livestock Census 2019) [1] . The cattle population trend (2012-2019) shows a clear shift in dairy animal stock towards crossbreds, with their population increased by 26.90% (20 th Livestock Census 2019) [1] . In comparison to many developed countries around the world, the India's milk productivity It is popular in northern India due to its high milk production capability as well as better adaptability to local climatic variations; additionally, it has a promising high tendency for further improvement on genetic basis (Dev et al. 2021) [16] . A number of different agro-climatic factors (period and season birth, period and season of calving, parity etc.) influence reproduction, production, and growth traits and thus directly obscure the expression of actual worth of a breed and animal (Dev et [16,47,20,2,34,15] . The present study was conducted to assess the importance and effect of different agro-climatic factors on production, reproduction and growth traits of Hardhenu cattle.

Materials and Methods

Data: Records on production, reproduction and growth traits of 440 Hardhenu cows kept at Department of Animal Genetics and Breeding, Lala Lajpat Rai University of Veterinary and Animal Sciences, Hisar, Haryana kept over a period of 10 years (2008-2018) were used. Animals with lactation lengths less than 100 days and milk produced less than 3 kg per day were excluded from the study.

Traits: Eleven different production, reproduction and growth traits up to third parity were examined in this study. Production traits taken under consideration were total milk yield (TMY), 300 days milk yield (300D MY), lactation length (LL), dry period (DP); reproduction traits as calving interval (CI), service period (SP), number of artificial insemination per conception (AI/Conception). However, birth weight, one month body weight, two month body weight and three month body weight were considered as growth traits.

Statistical analysis:

The following least-squares method of the General linear model was used to discern the influence of effect of period and season of birth, period and season of calving and parity order on reproduction, production and growth traits in targeted population.

Where, Y ijk = Observed value of growth traits; Y ijklmn = observed value of reproduction and production traits; µ = Overall mean; P i = Effect of i th period of birth; Q j = Effect of j th season of birth; R k = Effect of k th period of calving; S l = Effect of l th season of calving; T m = Effect of m th parity; e ijk and e ijklmn = random error associated with each observation assumed to be NID e (0,  2 ).

Where, i = 1, 2; j = 1, 2, 3; k = (1, 2, 3 for 1 st parity) and (1, 2 for 2 nd and 3 rd parity); l = 1, 2, 3; m = 1, 2, 3.

Model [1] analysed the growth traits viz. birth weight, one month, two month and three month body weight whereas Model [2] analysed production and reproduction traits viz.

Results and Discussion

The overall least-squares means for reproduction, production and growth traits, viz. [32] depicted significant effect of year and season of birth on all the lactation traits. On the other hand, Habib et al. (2010) [22] and Veraparsad et al. (2013) [47] depicted non-significant effect of year and season of birth on lactation traits. Animals calved during period 2017-2019 were having significantly 960 and 715 kg higher TMY, 300D MY respectively than period 2011-2013 and animals calved during period 2017-2019 were having significantly 144 and 27 kg higher TMY and 300D MY respectively than period 2014-2016 TMY and 300D MY. Similarly, significant effect of calving period was noticed in the literature on 300D MY (Thakur and Singh 2000 and 2001) [41, 42] . In contrast, Tewari et al. (1995) in Jersey × Sahiwal cows and Das et al. (2006) [12] in HF and Sahiwal cows observed no significant effect of period on various performance traits. The best performance of cows calved during the period 2014-2019 might be due to improvement of managemental practices over years, coupled with high number of high milk yield cows. Das et al. (2001) [13] and Thakur and Singh (2000 and 2005) [41,42] also noticed the influence of season of calving on various production traits of purebred and crossbred cows and winter calvers were recorded to have the highest means, while non-significant influence of season of calving was reported on TMY (Jadhav and Khan 1995) [25] and 300D MY (Das et al. 2006) [12] . There was significant (p<0.05) association found in TMY, 300D MY and LL of cows and different parities in Hardhenu cattle. On basis of Table [27] also reported similar findings. On contrary, Wondifraw et al. (2013) [46] and Singh et al.

(2013) reported non-significant effect of parity on lactation length. Wondifraw et al. (2013) [46] and Japheth et al. (2015) [26] [22] . There was significant association (p<0.01) of period of calving with DP. Animals calved in period 2011-2013 were having significantly shorter DP than period 2014-2019. Season of calving had no significant effect on DP and those animals calved in rainy season were having favourable mean values of DP than the animals calved in winter and summer season. Similar to our findings, Bhutkar et al. (2014) [9] , Dhawan et al. (2015) [17] , Kumar (2015) [28] and Sawant et al. (2016) [38] reported non-significant effect of season of calving on DP. Whereas, numerous researchers have documented the considerable impact of calving season on DP in the literature (Chaudhari et al. 2013, and Raja and Gandhi, 2015) [11,36] . According to Ahmed et al. (2007) [11,36] , parity has considerable effects on DP in crossbred cattle. On the other hand, Poudel et al. (2017) [33] found that parity had no significant impact in Murrah buffalo. Analysis showed that neither the period and season of birth, nor the period and season of calving, were significantly associated with SP or CI (p>0.05) in Hardhenu cattle ( [37] in Karan-Fries cattle. Non-significant effect of season of calving on SP and CI was reported by Divya et al. (2014) [18] and Kumar (2015) [28] in crossbreed cattle and Basak et al. (2018) [6] in Deoni. Repungent to the above findings, a significant effect of calving period and calving season on SP and CI was reported by many scientists (Chaudhari et al. 2013 and Dash et al. 2016) [11, ] . Here, there was non-significant association found in different parities of animals with their SP and CI in Hardhenu cattle. On perusal of Table 2, animals in third parity were having shorter SP and CI. There was no significant association found between different parities of animals with their SP and CI in Hardhenu cattle. However, the significant effect of parity on SP and CI was observed by Dash et al. (2016) [14] in crossbreed (Karan-Fries) and Basak et al. (2018) [6] [10] revealed a significant influence of calving season in Simmental cows, which is consistent with the current findings. Lactation parity (Ozkan and Gunes, 2007) [30] have significant effect on the number of AI per conception, similar with the findings of our study. However, Ozkan and Gunes (2011) [31] found non-significant effect of calving year, lactation parity, and calving season on the number of AI per conception. Analysis revealed that there was significant association of period of birth with birth weight, one and two month body weight (p<0. [19] , North-eastern Thai (Intaratham et al. 2008) [24] , Bali (Supriyantono et al. 2011) [40] , and Aceh cattle (Putra et al. 2014) [35] , the growth traits of cattle has been improved. Climatic variation in the breeding and feeding area can lead to differences in feed availability between years, which can affect growth traits and there was no significant association of season of birth with birth weight, one month, two month and three month body weight in the targeted population (p>0.05). Calves born in winter season gain higher birth weight, one month and two month body weight than born in summer and rainy season. Similarly, according to various studies, the season had an insignificant effect on the birth weight of Bosindicus cattle breeds including Fogera cattle (Addisu et al. 2010) [3] and Ongole grade (Hartati et al. 2015) [23] . Despite this, there have been reports of the season having a major effect on a number of breeds of cattle, including Bali (Gunawan and Jakaria, 2011) [21] , Gudali, and Wakwa (Ndofor-Foleng et al. 2011) [29] , and Sheko (Bayou et al. 2015) [8] . This study concluded that, among the agro-climatic factors, period of birth had significant (p<0.05) effect on Birth weight, one month body weight and two month body weight. Similarly, the period of calving had significant (p<0.01) effect on TMY, 300D MY, LL and DP taken into consideration and the period and calving season was found to have significant (p<0.05) effect on AI/conception. Parity had significant (p<0.05) effect on TMY, 300D MY, LL and DP.

Conclusion

In conclusion, this study highlights significant findings regarding the impact of various factors on reproduction, production, and growth traits in Hardhenu cattle. Specifically, the period of birth significantly influenced birth weight, one-month body weight, and two-month body weight. Moreover, the period of calving had a substantial effect on total milk yield (TMY), 300-day milk yield (300D MY), lactation length (LL), and dry period (DP). Additionally, both the period and calving season were found to significantly affect AI/conception rates. Furthermore, parity demonstrated significant effects on TMY, 300D MY, LL, and DP. These results underscore the complex interplay of temporal factors in shaping the performance metrics of Hardhenu cattle, contributing valuable insights for breeding and management practices in this breed.

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