ONGOLE: With the aim of bringing change in the dairy sector, Dr Maachepalli Basavaiah has been working sincerely to equip farmers with confidence through the artificial insemination of cattle. This 32-year-old veterinary doctor has ebeen ven honoured with the prestigious ‘National Gopala Ratna’ award from the Union Minister of State for Fisheries, Animal Husbandry and Dairying Sanjeev Balyan in Bengaluru recently.
Born and brought up in a middle-class couple M Venkateswarlu (59) and Ankamma (55) of Sangapuram village in Donakonda mandal of Prakasam district. He completed his B.V.Sc and M.V.Sc degrees in the Gannavaram Veterinary College affiliated to the Sri Venkateswara Veterinary University (SVVU), Tirupati. “I learned a lot more only after joining my job than through my academic studies,” Dr Basavaiah told TNIE.
Dr Basavaiah joined government services as a veterinary medical officer in the Rajampalli Veterinary hospital. After four and half years, he transferred to the present Botlapalem- a Government Veterinary hospital. Here with his experience and academic knowledge, Dr Basavaiah succeeded in motivating all dairy farmers of the villages within the Botlapalem Veterinary hospital jurisdiction to administer all available vaccines and precautionary medicine for their cattle safety and to produce a good quantity of quality milk.
“In my observation, the cattle of this area are prone to Endometriosis and Mastitis affiliated with Hormonal imbalance complications and if addressed these problems in time, the cattle life span will certainly extend further with healthy living. For all cattle, de-worming is a very important precautionary method. I used to visit villages and interact with cattle owners and tried my best to create awareness about the latest methods of artificial insemination for cattle and its benefits. Most of them are convinced and came forward for artificial insemination and sex-sorted insemination methods to administer to their cattle. Most of the cattle owners requested us to do sex-sorted AI to get Ongole race bulls and jersey race cows,” Basavaiah explained.
There are 15 village panchayats in the Botlapalem Veterinary Hospital jurisdiction which have around 23,000 cattle (both White-Cows and Black- buffaloes and around 35,000 sheep and goat population. Speaking with TNIE, the doctor said, “To get the best conceiving rate in the AI method, we should always take care of the sterilisation, and hygiene of the AI apparatus. Timely insemination plays a key role in conceiving cattle. I will work my best to make my district top in milk production.”
OVER 100% SUCCESS RATE
Dr Basavaiah attained 95 per cent success rate in the advanced SSAI process and achieved over 100 per cent success in his institutional target of Artificial Insemination by completing 2,050 targets against 1,400 assigned target