Dairy News
Vechur cow farmers milk rare cattle breed for all its worth
Tuesday, 30/08/2016
http://dairynews.in/vechur-cow-farmers-milk-rare-cattle-breed-worth/
KOCHI: Even as the various cow vigilante groups that recently sprung up in North India have been in the news for all the wrong reasons, Vechur cow farmers in Kerala– which leads the country in beef consumption– are bracing for a silent revolution in cattle rearing by manufacturing and marketing various value added products of this rare breed of cattle that takes it nomenclature from a village of the same name in Kottayam.
It is widely believed that having virgin cows’ urine at dawn will provide relief from a host of ailments. Cashing in on the belief, Vechur Conservation Trust, set up to save the smallest cow in the world from the brink of extinction, has been imparting training to Vechur farmers to distill cows’ urine and enable them to market the product in the state.
Speaking to Express, Dr Sosamma Iype, a pioneer in reviving the internationally famed Vechur cow breed and who recently won the India Biodiversity Award 2016, said the Trust had been empowering the farmers to produce distilled cows’ urine as there was a huge demand for it from Ayurveda pharma companies for producing eye drops, medicines for stomach ailments, toothpaste, toilet soap and herbal powder among other things.
“We had begun to impart training for producing distilled cows’ urine– ‘Gomu’— on an experimental basis a couple of years ago. Now, there is great demand for the cows’ distilled urine and the Trust has been helping the breeders to sell the products. As the breeders are few in number in Kerala, more often than not the Trust and breeders can’t bridge the supply-demand gap,” she said.