A study of the performance some of production, reproductive, herd combination and economic traits of smallholder dairy farms in Zabol

In this study 429 smallholder dairy farms in 44 villages of the Zabol county included 1728 lactating cows during February 2015 to March 2016 were used to assess the performance of smallholder farms. The performance of production traits were as 13.66, 7.82 and 7.24 kg for average total milk yield in farm, average milk sold in farm and average daily milk production per cow, respectively. The overall mean of reproductive traits and mortality rate were as 28.71 months for age at first calving, 14.17 months for calving interval, 232.66 days for average lactation length, 7.76% for calf mortality rate up to yearling age and 1.35% for mature cow mortality rate. The mean of daily feed consumption per cow was 13.36 kg, with 29.33% concentrate. The mean of daily feed intake expenses per cow and return from sale of daily milk per farm were 83 and 90 thousand rails, respectively. The value of milk income to daily feed intake expenses per cow, daily feed intake to average daily milk production and the kg milk price to kg feed intake ratio were 95.48%,2.20 and 1.97, respectively. The average total herd size was 8.76 head, included 30.57% lactating cows, 16.20% dry cows, 11.95% female milking calves, 11.79% male milking calves, 10.18% male growing calves, 10.03% female growing calves, 5.76% mature bulls and 3.52% pregnant heifer, respectively. There was significant variation between different levels of season, breed, rearing system and herd size all of the most traits.