Changsari, Feb 18: West Assam Milk Producers’ Cooperative Union Ltd. (WAMUL), popularly known as Purabi Dairy, launched its range of Cattle Feed supplements, Purabi Pashu Pushti,on February 18 to augment its drive towards increasing milk productivity and reducing production cost for dairy farmers.
The range of Cattle Feed supplements shall reinforce WAMUL’s efforts in improving milk productivity of cattle and thus reduction in cost of production. Productivity improvement is identified as one of the key areas of interventions required for dairy development in Assam.
As a part of the planned product line-up, WAMUL has commenced production of Area Specific Mineral Mixture & By-Pass Protein Meal at its Cattle Feed Plant situated at Changsari, Kamrup district.
The plants were inaugurated by Shri Siddhartha Bhattacharya, Minister of Cooperation, Govt. of Assam,in presence of Shri Meenesh Shah, Executive Director, NDDB and Chairman, WAMUL Management Committee; Shri Rajesh Prasad IAS, Principal Secretary to Govt. of Assam and Agriculture Production Commissioner (APC), Assam and Shri Maninder Singh IAS, Additional Chief Secretary to the Govt. of Assam, Department of Cooperation on February 18.
On the occasion of the inauguration, Chairman, WAMUL Management Committee, Shri Meenesh Shah highlighted that WAMUL has been promoting and propagating scientific feeding practices like Ration Balancing Programme (RBP) and breed upgradation through Artificial Insemination (AI) programme.
These projects are supported & funded by Govt. of Assam through Assam Project for Agri-Business & Rural Transformation (APART) – WAMUL being the End Implementing Agency (EIA) for Formal Dairy Sector. Providing Area specific mineral mixture for productivity enhancement is a vital element in the feed regime, especially for productive & reproductive health of the cattle.
Shri Bharat Chandra Kalita, a farmer member of the WAMUL Management Committee and a highly experienced dairy farmer, shared his experience & expressed his happiness on behalf of all the farmers on the occasion as their own cooperative is once again starting manufacturing of cattle feed & feed supplements, which is highly essential & critical in supporting dairying. He also expressed his gratitude for the support extended from the Govt. of Assam and National Dairy Development Board (NDDB) to their dairy cooperative.
While discussing about the product with technical team of WAMUL it came to light that in cattle feed a major and one of the most nutritive components is protein. An innovative process to increase the bio availability of such protein has been adopted to produce by-pass protein.
Presently, WAMUL launched Bypass Protein as a feed supplement for the cattle. In days to come, the compound cattle feed to be manufactured in the plant will use such bypass protein as an ingredient to produce Bypass Protein based Compound Cattle Feed.
WAMUL is the apex dairy cooperative of Assam and one of the fastest growing indigenous dairy brands in the entire North East India. Approved by FSSAI, Purabi dairy is known for its line of Dairy products ranging from pasteurised & fortified pouch milk variants, plain curd, sweetened curd, ghee, lassi, paneer, cream etc.
Ever since its inception in 1976 under the operation flood programme of National Dairy Development Board (NDDB), WAMUL has gone to create a symbiotic relationship between the milk producers of Assam and milk & milk products consumers.
WAMUL being a farmer led dairy cooperative is able to provide livelihood support to thousands of local farmers every year, while at the same time being the beloved household dairy brand of Assam.
WAMUL ensures 100% direct digital payments to the farmers, which results in a transparent and trustworthy system, while at the same time, ploughing back more than 75 percent of their revenue to the pourer members and ensuring year-long consistent income to the dairy farmers.
At present, WAMUL is managed by the National Dairy Development Board and holds market leadership in Assam in pasteurised & fortified pouch milk segment with sales of over 67,000 litres of milk per day and over 5000 litres worth of milk products.
With World Bank funding, under the APART project of Govt. of Assam, WAMUL has been able to deploy a team of veterinary doctors to ensure productivity enhancement of cattle through AI service network. With launch of its range of cattle feed & feed supplements, WAMUL will be able to ensure supply of nutritious & healthy feed supplements to the farmers.
These measures will in turn result in better quality & quantity milk production and higher returns to the local dairy farmers a step towards the “Doubling Farmers’ Income” aim set by Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi.