do 



. GRAZING GROUNDS. 



Success in cattle-breeding depends very largely on the area 

 available for the animals to wander in. The question of grazing 

 grounds is therefore closely allied with the problem of improving the 

 breeding arrangements of the province. The average area of land 

 available for grazing and not yet cultivated calculated for each head 

 of cattle including buffaloes but not including sheep and goats 

 varies from a quarter of an acre or less in Gurdaspur, Amritsar and 

 other Central "Punjab districts to nearly eighteen acres in Mianwali. 

 Omitting the hill tracts of Rawalpindi, only nine districts and these 

 in the west of the province show an average of more than 1^- acres 



- for each head of cattle. This calculation assumes that waste land 

 owned by Government is thrown open for grazing, but this addi- 

 tion to the village grazing grounds is only important in the western 

 districts. Such arithmetical calculations, however, must be qualified 

 by a consideration of the advantage enjoyed by tracts where the 

 cultivation is largely barani in the extra grazing available in the 

 frequent fallows. Thus, Rohtak with only half an acre af uncultiva- 

 ted grazing land is better off than Lahore wnere the average is more 

 than three quarters of an acre, and Jhelum has more advantages than 

 Delhi though the average area of grazing is almost indentical in 

 both districts. The plains of Hariana provide ample space for the 



* necessary exercising of the cattle Ipred in that tract. Nor does the 

 spread of unirrigated cultivation destroy the natural advantages of 

 these grazing grounds, for even in a good year the fallows are exten- 

 sive, and the grasses they contain though sparse, are extremely 

 nutritious. The Dhanni breed possesses no less an advantage in the 

 unirrigated lands and broken unculturable ground of the Jhelum, 

 Attoek and Rawalpindi districts, and the conditions of the Sind and 

 Biluchistan breeding grounds are not dissimilar. But where close 

 cultivation, and especially canal-irrigated cultivation, has almost 

 annihilated the waste, the indigenous breed deteriorates in quality 

 until it finally disappears as a distinct type. The space so neces- 



i sary for exercise is wanting. Valuable crops are always on the 

 ground, and the cattle are driven along dusty lanes to the com- 

 mon grazing ground, seldom extensive and continually encroached 

 on by the plough. Such are the conditions prevailing at the 

 present day in the canal-irrigated tracts of the province and in 



/ districts such as Hoshiarpur and Sialkot where the comparative 

 ease wiih which well-irrigation can be. carried on and the 

 fertility of the soil have placed practically every available acre 

 under the plough. The number of animals bred under these 

 conditions must be comparatively small and the quality increasingly 

 inferior. 



