Vol. 9, Special Issue 2, Part A (2025)

A study was conducted on housing and feeding management practices of crossbred dairy cattle in Khasi and Jaintia Hill districts of Meghalaya. The main aim of the study was to analyze the present housing and feeding management strategies adopted by the farmers in the two combined districts. The interview schedule was developed, and the data was collected randomly from two districts, Khasi hill (60 farmers) and Jaintia hill (60 farmers) by using of multistage sampling method. The data collected for housing management were types of housing, manger, floor, roof and roofing materials, microclimatic measures, floor space availability and feeding space availability and for feeding management like types of feeding, different fodders available, various ingredients used for feeding of dairy cattle and source of water available. Most farmers used tie-barn (100.00%) housing system with fence line feeding (94.17%). All the farmers used galvanized iron sheet as roofing material (100.00%) and majority (82.50%) used wood as floor materials which caused slippery floor with poor drainage (85.83%). The available floor space per SAU in various farmer groups was found to be 57.65±2.34 ft². Broom leaves, guava leaves and para grass were provided by the majority (60.00%) of dairy farmers as green fodder and all the farmers used paddy straw as dry fodder. The study concluded that the farmers still practice the old method of rearing the dairy cattle but for better improvement of the management practices, the dairy farmer need to adopt to modern type of rearing the dairy animals.