Press Release ICAR Scientists to make Indigenous donkeys multi-tasking New Delhi/ 15/09/11 Deeply concerned with rapidly

declining population of indigenous donkeys in Indi a the scientists of Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) are engaged t o update the bio-data of donkeys by scientific innovations to make them more use ful for farmers. Along with other details this bio-data includes the load carryi ng capacity of donkeys, capacity to work without interval, capacity to work with regular interval of one hour, ploughing and carting capacity of individual donk eys. The techniques developed by the centre will be helpful for farmers and also will de crease overloading of donkeys which decrease their life span and becomes fatal f or some time, said Dr Yashpal, Head, Bikaner Regional Centre of National Research C entre on Equines, Hisar, an institute of ICAR dedicated for research on Horses, Mules, Donkeys and Ponnies in India. The capacity of the donkeys and mules is de cided by putting them on trade mill exercise. The scientists have standardised t he weight, height and capacity ratio of average healthy donkeys and recommend th e farmers the maximum weight, ploughing and carting capacity of their donkeys wh ich increases the life of the animal and profitability of the farmers. Multi-purpo se use of donkeys will make them more beneficial and economic for small farmers and thus increase their demand which will ultimately be helpful to increase thei r population, hoped Dr Yashpal. The scientists are also designing special ploughs, harnesses and carts for donkeys. Bulls pull by shoulders but donkeys pull by chest so we need special instruments for donkeys to make them efficient in agriculture and other sectors, informed Dr Yashpal. Presently donkeys are used in ploughing i n border areas of Gujrat and the farmers of some parts of Rajasthan use them in carts but their ploughs and carts are old designed and increase unnecessary burd en on animal. Explaining the results of their experiments Dr Yashpal said, As pack, it is better to pack the animals with small loads (20 to 30% of their body weight) because an imals can work for longer period (6 hour) with this load. The experiments also s howed that donkeys can carry up to 50% of their body weight but for short durati ons of 2-3 hour and rest in between. 1hWork-1hRest-1hWork-1hRest-1hWork-1hRest-1 hWork-1hRest-1hWork-1 h rest is the best combination for donkeys used for pack l oad. Load should be evenly distributed to both the sides of the animal. Keeping in view, the draught capacity of donkey single animal drawn matching plo ugh was designed and indigenous adult donkeys were trained for ploughing operati on. In ploughing operation, total working hours were four (2 hours each) and res t of two hour was given to the donkeys in between the work. Average land ploughe d was 0.146 hectare in 4 hours. Average speed of operation was observed to be 1. 835kmph. The experiments were also carried on exotic varieties of donkeys which have more weight, height and hence more powerful than indigenous breed. But indigenous br eed are more equipped to Indian climate and more disease resistant. Further, the alarming decrease in their population forces the government to think seriously on their conservation. According to the reports of Live Stock Census- 2010 con ducted by Department of Animal Husbandry & Dairying, Government of India, the po pulation of donkeys in India has decrease 30 % in last decade and decreasing ala rmingly.