Langur to control Monkeys

This is an interesting thing.

Earlier monkeys used to be guests on our Coconut-Cocoa farm for a couple of days randomly.They used to hang around for a couple of days and then leave.
This year unlike every year close to 50 monkeys came in and they had no intentions to leave and they are on the farm close to two months already.

Damage they do is terrible.They pluck tender coconuts,breakdown banana trees, pluck unmatured cocoa pods, uproot vegetable plants and list is endless.
Sad thing is they don't eat those either, may be they consume only 1% of it and the rest is wasted.Finally they started scaring workers on the farm.
People working on the farm are scared to enter the farm.

Finally we started thinking of scaring them away.We tried many things like manually scaring them, crackers with sound to scare them.But nothing worked.

And something finally worked.Guess what? Langur (kondamuchu in Telugu)
Langur almost similar to monkeys at least visually. Few differences I noticed are long tail,black face and other minor differences.

We had to get one from close by village and the moment Langur is around monkeys left with out any resistance. A group of 50 monkeys left with the arrival of one Langur.
Had no clue why monkeys are scared of Langur. But it worked.

Ongole Cows

We decided to use Jeevamrutham and vermicompost on our farm.So what next? Desi cows... started thinking of desi cows...which breed..where to buy from etc.Finally decided to have Ongole cows and Gir cows on our farm.

The Ongoles are very fine and majestic-looking cattle, huge in size and suitable for steady, heavy drought  Their performance has been admirable under varying conditions and they are one of the most unique triple-purpose cattle of the tropics, serving well as drought, milk and farm animals.The Ongoles are no longer restricted to Andhra Pradesh; they are now an international breed, spread throughout most of the Americas, a few countries in Africa, the Far East and Australia. The irony is they are being ignored in its place of origin and doing wonders in countries like Brazil.

Countries with considerable Ongole population

We wanted to get pure ongole cows and we decided to get them from LAM farm, Guntur.LAM farm is a government breeding center dedicated to improve ongole cattle.I won three cows in their annual auction, this was the first time ever I participated in the bidding process and it is a thrilling experience.They are kind of reared in wild and had less human interaction at LAM farm,we had tough time to load them on trucks to be transported.Once on farm cows they took couple of months to adjust in their new home as they are separated from the herd of 500. Initially they were fuming at anybody who goes closer to them but now they are very friendly cows wanting our attention.

All three cows are pregnant and our first calf will be born in August 2013.My daughter is still scared to go close to cows and is waiting very eagerly for the calves to arrive.

Search for Gir cows is on.

Picture source :Internet

Paadi-Panta

"Paadi-Panta" is a very common Telugu wording which means agriculture and animal husbandry.May be our fore fathers who have been cultivating this land for centuries might have realized that agriculture in long run will not prosper with out animals on farms.This must be the only secret they passed down healthy soils to their next generations.

Chemical fertilizers are introduced to us with Green Revolution as a substitutes to NPK  but governments failed to educate farmers on how to use them and maintain soil health in long run while using chemical fertilizers.Our farmers use at least 3-4 times the recommended doses of fertilizers.I have seen our neighbouring  fields where commercial corps are grown only on chemical fertilizers with out any organic manure or cover crops for the last 10 years, soil on those fields now is just a pile of life less sand.Same is the case with case with pesticides, we are destroying the entire ecosystem in the name of crop protection.Last 10-15 years I have seen drastic changes.On a rainy day our surrounding paddy fields used to echo with frog croaking all over,now I hardly hear a frog.I remember seeing hundreds of vultures preying on dead animals and clear it in a while but now I can't spot a vulture and dead animals have to rot.And list goes on and on..

I believe the best thing that has happened to Indian agriculture in last decade is multi fold price rise of chemical fertilizers.Don't be surprised,let me tell you why? This might in some short term take cut in the profits from agriculture if any.But in the long term it will definitely reduce the over usage of fertilizers and farmers will start thinking of bring back cattle on farms.I am already seeing this change ,many farmers started experimenting with Subhash Plalekar's approach , vermicompost ,silt from irrigation lakes and other alternates.Once these farmers are successful others will follow. This will bring back life in our soils for sure.

I can very clearly see the difference on our farm after applying farm yard manure(FYM) and silt from near by irrigation lakes.After applying silt and FYM to our palm oil plantation its moisture retention capacity increased many fold and yield increased too.Same is the case with coconut inter cropped with cocoa.All these days we used to buy FYM from neighbouring villages,but recently its price too increased many fold.

We have to bring back cattle on our farm to start our experiments with jeevamrutham and vermicompost for now.Our goal is to make our farm chemical fertilizer and pesticide free.

Will keep you updated on the progress.