Chennai: Animal husbandry minister P. Balakrishna Reddy on Friday announced the setting up of a fodder research centre at Tirupur and a veterinary epidemiology centre at Chennai.
In his reply to the discussion on demand for grants to his ministry, the minister told the state Assembly that the epidemiology centre would be helpful to give prior announcements about the outbreak of cattle diseases.
He said the number of seats for B.V.Sc degree would be increased from 280 to 320, he said. The government would give 12,000 cows this year to the same number of families and four lakh goats to one lakh families.
In the last five years, 60,000 priceless milch cows had been given at a cost of Rs 211 crore, paving the way for the increase of milk production to 2.66 lakh litres.
The cows had given birth to 75,796 calves. So far, seven lakh families had benefited in the free goat scheme under which 28 lakh goats had been given and they had given birth to over 44 lakh young ones.
Under the schemes to develop production of country and broiler chicken, the production had gone up to 0.19 metric tonne of country chicken and 24.23 metric tonne of broiler chicken, the minister said.
The total income for the government from the chicken farms had increased from Rs 289 crore to 429 crore. The growth in eggs production is 47 per cent in the last five years when compared to the five-year period of the DMK government, he added.
