Cow Welfare: Only Sustainable Gaushalas can ensure it

Abstract

Cow service occupies a very important place in the Indian psyche. The number of indigenous cows is continuously falling in India. They are released as soon as they become unviable to the owner. Due to this, the problem of stray animals starts to get deeper which is further deepened by the law on cow slaughter ban . Gaushalas are considered to be the best option for the management of ever-growing stray cattle. Even before this problem arose, gaushalas existed in India to protect and maintain the cow dynasty for decades. Since gaushalas have to maintain less remunerative animals and their primary purpose of establishment has been the welfare of the cow, they need to be self-sufficient. Thus, it is important that their level of sustainablility is studied so that those indicators that have room for improvement can be indentified. Therefore, this paper addresses various aspects related to the welfare level of cow in the state of Haryana. It was found that net income is higher in Type A (financially supported by village communities) and larger size . To study the Sustainablility, the Combined Sustainability Index (CSI) has been developed and is higher in large-sized gaushalas (0.41). The over all CSI was found to be 0.37, indicating low persistence of cowsheds in the study area. Animal welfare score were also measured and the correlation coefficient between welfarescore and CSI found more in Type A and larger sized.