Jafarabadi
The Jafarabadi breed is original from Gujarat, India.
Description: Black colored coat. Massive and long-barreled conformation. Horns are long, heavy and broad and sometimes they cover the eyes. Height at withers of the adult male is 142 cm, body weight varies from 600 to 1 500 kg. Height at withers of the adult female is 140 cm, body weight is about 550 kg, some individuals may weigh as much as 700-800 kg.
Distribution: It is one of the most important breeds in Gujarat. This breed is located principally between the Mahi and Sabarmati rivers in north Gujarat. Some breeding stock has been exported to Brazil.
Husbandry: Buffaloes are traditionally managed in domestic conditions together with the calf. They are hand-milked twice a day. They are fed different kinds of roughages: barley and wheat straw, cornstalks, sugarcane residuals. In addition, they are given concentrate mixtures. If grazing is available, they graze all day long. They are naturally mated. Some villages also provide artificial insemination (Moioli and Borghese, 2005) Dairy performance: Lactation duration 350 days Milk yield 1 800-2 700 kg Milk fat 8.5 percent The performance characteristics of the Jafarabadi breed maintained at the Junagarh Centre (India)
of the Network Project on Buffalo are presented below (Sethi, 2003):
| Average body weight (kg) Age at first calving (days) First lactation 305 days or less yield (kg) First lactation total yield (kg) All lactation 305 days or less yield (kg) All lactation total yield (kg) All lactation length (days) Average fat (percent) Average dry period (days) Service period (days) Calving interval (days) Number of services per conception Average calf mortality (0-3 months) | 529±13 1 925±196 1 642±283 1 642±283 1 950±79 2 097±110 320.1±11.6 7.7±1.0 159.8±10.9 161.5±14.0 509.8±20.1 1.4±0.1 10.75 percent |
Jafarabadi is a good milk producer but it is also a big animal, with good conformation and high muscularity. Therefore this breed was chosen by many American countries and selected as meat purpose breed. Now it is possible to find Jafarabadi pure or derivates in Brazil (figure 14), in
Colombia (figure 15) and in other South America countries, where this breed showed a great adaptability to marshlands, to different crops and pastures and a high meat production. Jafarabadi was too the basis for the creation of Buffalypso breed in Trinidad- Tobago and in Cuba.
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