Evaluation of Enterprises Raising Water Buffalo in Samsun Province of Turkey

Abstract

This study was conducted to determine the barn, nutrition and milking characteristics of enterprises raising water buffalo in Bafra. For this purpose, 45 enterprises were selected by using random sampling method. Data were obtained from survey which was made face to face with owners in their enterprises. Based on the data, indoor and semi-open barns constitute 53.3 and 31.1% of total, respectively. While barn base of all enterprises was concrete, ventilation was highly inadequate. Ad-libitum feeding was highly popular 84.4 % and 86.7 % of total was determined to prefer concentrate feed stuffs as a supplement to rangelands. In total, 95.6 % of the all enterprises were having their own silage and silages were based on corn (42.2 %) and corn-grass mixes (51.1%). Milking was manually made by women with 71.1 and 62.2 %, respectively. Although pre-milking udder care was almost perfect (93.3%), post-milking udder care rate was only 17.8. Milk produced from water buffalo is highly sold after being stored in plastic bottles (60%). In total % 40 of the produced milk is sold daily and 20% of the milk is sold as yogurt or cheese. It has been determined that average price of water buffalos milk is 3.85 TL/l. Based on the data, it can be concluded that owners need some information and education about air conditioning of barns, milking hygiene, animal welfare, milk storing process and animal nutrition.

Keywords: Bafra, milking, nutrition, barn, survey, Buffalo.