Farmers in India have been using traditional health care practices in dairy farming since time immemorial. Present paper is an attempt to review the Indigenous Technical Knowledge (ITK) practised and documented across five regions in India viz., North, South, East, West and North East regions to understand the prevalence of ITKs and its dynamics of usage across the country. Cross regional analysis of location specificity of different ITKs, similarities and variation in ingredients usage and researchable issues in ITKs would help in further promoting its widespread usage. Large inter-regional variation in the ITK usage warrants a scope to popularize the validated ITKs among the dairy farmers of other regions where these are not being practised. Concerted research efforts are required in treatment of the important diseases like mastitis which causes heavy economical losses to the farmers, whereas the ITKs may be refined in the form of user friendly package for ultimate solution to the diseases.

Good dairy management practices are a widely important tool for facilitating and promoting farmers' production and marketing of healthy, high quality milk and milk products to meet food and consumer expectations. In this context, the present research study was designed to make an attempt to find out the extent of adoption of animal welfare practices by the dairy farmers at field level. The study was conducted in the Central plain zone of Uttar Pradesh State. Four districts (Hardoi, Auraiya, Allahabad and Kaushambi) were selected purposively. One block from each district and from each block two villages and from each village 15 farmer-respondents were selected randomly. A total of 120 respondents were finally approached for the primary data collection. The salient findings with regard to adoption of good dairy management practices revealed that, more than half of the respondents (55.83%) belonged to medium level of adoption category, followed by 27.56 and 16.67% in low and high level of adoption category, respectively. The study further suggests sensitizing and training the extension personnel’s /veterinarians about the good dairy management practices and strengthening the dairy extension services among dairy farmers in the study area.

The study was undertaken in Kerala to evaluate the challenges of dairy farming at research, extension and farmers' level. A total number of 200 respondent farmers and stakeholders from research and extension domain in the study area were selected randomly. Garret's ranking technique was adopted to analyze the constraints faced by the stakeholders in the study area. The major constraint faced by the dairy farmers were the high cost of cattle feed and high cost of veterinary service and medicine was the second major constraint experienced by the farmers. The important constraints faced by the officials involved in extension services included implementation of large number of schemes in Panchayat and block level followed by lack of transportation facilities to make field visit. In research system, the major constraint was the prioritized mandate of teaching and extension followed by time constraint for technology transfer.

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Animal welfare assumes much significance in the era of dairy commercialization, both for health of the animals as well as to improve the farm productivity. Although animal welfare scores, scales and modules have been developed and implemented at developed countries, the outreach of animal welfare and awareness about the same has not been given due importance in developing countries including India. In this context, the present research study was designed to make an attempt to find out the extent of adoption of animal welfare practices by the dairy farmers at field level. The study was conducted in the Central plain zone of Uttar Pradesh State. Four districts (Hardoi, Auraiya, Allahabad and Kaushambi) were selected purposively. One block from each district and from each block two villages and from each village 15 farmer-respondents were selected randomly. A total of 120 respondents were finally approached for the primary data collection. The salient findings revealed that, in case of overall adoption of animal welfare practices, more than half of the dairy farmers (55.83%) had medium level of adoption, whereas remaining 23.34 and 20.83% respondents had high and low levels of adoption, respectively. Hence, majority of the farmers were adopting the dairy management practices which met the welfare protocols of the dairy animals.