Livestock and Dairy Development Board (LDDB) has joined hands with as many as 225 livestock farmers to set up Feedlot Fattening Farms (FFF) across the province under its project to maximise bio-economic and sustainable meat production and its value addition through meat processing and quality control.
Sources in the LDDB told Business Recorder, here on Wednesday that the Board has entered in to an agreement with farmers of 225 farms having 15 to 300 cattle-heads against the target of 200 farms during the financial year ending June 30.
Sources claimed that their experts visited throughout the province and contacted people to set up these farms, where farmers would bring their animals about 90 days before marketing them and during this period, these animals would be given special feed and nutrition supplements. This will increase the weight of the animal as well as quality of the meat. In this way, farmers will get good price of their cattle. These centres will be divided in to three categories small, medium and large fattening farms for beef and mutton.
Sources said that they had already started working with these people by extending them technical advice, vaccination and other precautionary measures. They would be giving a presentation to the heads of the Board about progress on this work in the Punjab province by the end of this month in the Federal Capital, they added.
The sources further said under the same programme they had identified 11-12 exporters of meat and arranging their linkages with these fattening farms so the farmers could go in to exports of meat and earn handsomely.
Under another programme milk collection and marketing for small and landless farmers', the sources said that they had identified 13 different locations in the province to set up chillers for enhancing the life of milk and ensure good return to the farmers of their production. Out of these 13 points, 10 are situated in Kasur and three in Nowshera Virkan, the sources concluded.