Socio-economic profile of farmers and performance of crossbred dairy cattle reared under the dairy cooperative’s societies in Khasi and Jaintia Hill districts of Meghalaya

A study was conducted on socioeconomic profile of dairy farmers and performance of crossbred dairy cattle reared under dairy cooperative's societies in Khasi and Jaintia hill districts of Meghalaya.Data were collected from 120 dairy farmers from two districts, Khasi hill (60 farmers) and Jaintia hill (60 farmers), under 20 dairy cooperative societies, with 6 farmers from each society, based on the number of dairy animals, years of rearing and quality of milk sold to dairy cooperative societies.The data were primarily collected from the dairy farmers in the study area.The study found that majority (81.70%) of the dairy farmers were male, 42.50 per cent of the respondents were middle-aged (30-50 years) which had a medium (3-7) size family (63.30%) and 30.80 per cent were educated up to middle school.Majority (75.80%) of farmers hold marginal (0.5-1 ha) land holding and nearly all of them (91.70%)engaged in agriculture and animal husbandry as their primary activity and 50.80 per cent of them earn less than Rs 53,281 annually.The mean peak milk yield, daily milk yield and lactation yield were 13.300.21,7.940.20 and 2660.6642.86L, respectively with the lactation length of 301.841.49days.The mean calving interval and service period were 407.022.13 and 105.181.59days, respectively.The mean age at first calving was 31.373.49months and service per conception was 2.120.03numbers.