Five goat kids born through artificial insemination

Coimbatore, Feb 13: The Animal Husbandry wing of the Tamil Nadu Agricultural University (TNAU) has recently carried out artificial insemination on a 'Tellicherry goat' paving the birth of five ''healthy kids''.

Talking to UNI, Prof R Balagopal of the Animal Husbandry wing said so far the process of artificial insemination was done only on cows and buffaloes.

This new experiment, after research by the wing on goats, was found to be successful, he said, adding that artificial insemination was carried out thrice on the Tellicherry goat at an interval of eight hours, resulting in the animal giving birth to five kids, three healthy males and two females.

Stating that the method of artificial insemination was used on nearly 200 goats, Prof Balagopal said the feedback from the farmers was encouraging.

Altogether 43 Tellicherry goats were being reared in the TNAU farm, he said. There was a huge demand for the Kerala breed goats, as farmers not only from Tamil Nadu, but also from Kerala were booking in advance to purchase livestock from the TNAU for its 'purity', he added.

Apart from the semen of this native breed, the farm had also purchased semen of a goat breed called 'BOER,' mostly found in Australia, from the Madras Veterinary College for the benefit of the farmers.

TNAU Vice-Chancellor Dr C Ramasamy said in the normal process, a goat gave birth to a maximum of three kids. But through the artificial insemination, it had proved that the number of births could be more.

It was also found that the average weight of a kid born through the new method was two kg, against the normal 1.5 to 1.6 kg, he added.

UNI