I have a number of pigeons in my house but I have no idea of how to feed them or look after them when they fall ill. Can you help me? They may have diarrhoea.
A: Diarrhoea is very common in pigeons during the winter. Use homeopathy. If it has been cold in your city and it’s been raining too, you can give the bird Dulcamara 30. If the bird looks very weak and its droppings are bright green in colour and liquidy, this indicates that the bird has been suffering from starvation. For this, you can give Arsenicum 30. If the colour of the droppings is dark or light brown and is liquidy, then you can give Alum 30. You can get granules of these medicines made from any homeopathy shop. They are easier to hand-feed and administer. For each of these medicines, the dosage will be ONE granule THREE times a day. Continue for 3 days.
In addition to this, please feed them lots of water through the day. Also, put a small pinch of Electrol in their water each time you feed them, and hand feed them the water with a syringe.
Now, about the diet, it is advisable to give them food that is very light on the stomach. Soak white channa (chick peas) overnight. Then next morning, wash it and boil it for 20 minutes. When it cools down, hand feed it to the bird. Next, take bhutta/chhalli and take out its corn.
Wash it, and boil it for 20 minutes again. When it cools down, it can be fed. You can feed it twice a day. One time channa, one time corn. During each feed, you can give around 30-40 pieces of corn or channa, depending on the size of the crop. Continue this diet till the bird recovers.
The government animal husbandry department is very keen on breeding foreign cows. Or at least of making hybrids of Indian-foreign cows. Their claim is that these give much more milk?
A: Many people in this country have not got over their colonial hang-ups. And the Animal Husbandry Department of the Government of India is the most illiterate and senseless in this respect. Like Indian dogs which are hardy and useful have been turned into strays and in their place come these weak vulnerable and ill-suited foreign breeds, the same way, these foreign cows are just not good enough for Indian conditions.
Why should we not conserve Indian breeds of cow? If you practice good husbandry methods you can get upto 8 litres a day . Even in places like National Dairy Research Centre, Karnal, which is full of foreign cows, they get much less than that.
A: In India, even taking a breed cow from the South to the North and vice versa creates lots of problems for the animal. Can you imagine what happens when a cow comes from the USA? Should we try to improve milk yield by bringing semen from USA to India.
Breed evolution takes thousands of years. If our experts had felt that they can improve upon nature to create new breeds such as ‘Friezwal’ for example within a short span of one generation, by merely inseminating a Sahiwal cow with Friezwal semen, they ought to accept that it is more sensible to develop Indian breeds.
The reason for low productivity of our cows is not genetic breed limitations of Indian cows. Our cows have become low milk producing due to deprived feed and care over last about 100 years. Efforts should be directed towards better availability of feed, health care, housing and training rather than exotic semen.
FAO has also observed that Indian cows in Brazil have been very successful. If our cows can do well abroad, what stops them from doing well here? Nothing, except the stupidity of bureaucrats.
In a recent Aqua exhibition by the government of Kerala in Kochi I saw Indian parrot-fishes with OM tattooed on them. Is this legal?
A: This is an extremely cruel thing to do. Normal chemical paints are tattooed into the fish by using needles. This is supposed to be attractive to the customer. But the fish will die within one week. The pain that they have suffered makes them weak and vulnerable. The chemical in the paint spreads into their bodies and poisons them. This is completely illegal. Please give me the names and addresses of any company or shop that does this. The punishment is 3 years in jail and a heavy fine. The shop can also be closed down. As I said before, the Animal Husbandry department is full of people who are totally brainless.
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