Cattle Keeping in the Western Ghats Villages.

The actual condition of bovine keeping in India, ""the world's largest cattle keeping"" have scarcely been investigated, in contrast to the frequent debate over ""sacred cow"". This paper analyzed the contemporary condition of bovine keeping in the area of Western Ghats, with the case study of Kurubathur and Yadavarahalli in Sakleshpur (Manjarabad) Taluk, Hassan District focusing on the three topics; village community, agricultural management and regional relation. The main findings of this paper are as follows; 1) From the perspective of village community, cattle and buffalo play an essential role for economical support and reproduction on an enlarged scale. Their excrement is utilized as primary manure for paddy crop and plantation products such as coffee and cardamom. A vast grazing land has been farmed under the control village community. Recent phenomena, however, such as overgrazing and separate control of grazing land, have caused a great change in the habitual method of bovine keeping, and remain as administrative problems. 2) All the households keeping bovine were classified into four classes according to the rearing soze of their bovine populations; (1) Both the medium and the large classes surpassed the rest in the rearing number and the size of landholdings; (2) they were enlarging not only cattle rearing but also the plantations of coffee and cardamom. Although still marginal in scale, however bovine keeping has been more generally dissminated over the village since 1966. It can be guessed, that plantation management farm has been gradually shifting from the ""Sacred cow"" keeping type although his is the fundamental type of cattle rearing-to the more practical type by rearing more economical buffaloes. There are three kinds of cow farming from the point of view of management: (A) reproduction on an enlarged scale type, (B) plain reproduction type, (C) purchasing rearing type. Both types of (A) and (B) consist of a self-supply system for rearing, while (C) rype nearly dwpend on purchasing. 3) The d