A CORRESPONDENT
BARPETA: A large portion of Northeast's largest and only cattle farm with frozen semen production facility, in Barpeta district, will be made free from illegal encroachers very soon. Steps will also be taken to address its erosion problem, announced Animal Husbandry Minister Atul Bora while addressing the media after visiting the site on Monday. Minister Bora also assured that the farm would be developed to help the unemployed youths.
Mentionably, approximately 750 bighas of land of the cattle farm have been under the occupation of encroachers for several years. Moreover, 700 bighas of land have been gobbled up by erosion of Beki River.
The Barpeta Cattle Farm is stretched over 2,014 bighas of land was Eetablished in 1946. The only frozen semen production centre in the NE was set up there in 2015. Till date, this centre has produced 25,85,384 frozen cattle semen.
The official website of Animal Husbandry & Veterinary on 'Frozen Semen & LN Distribution Network' says, "The frozen semen produced in the 'Barpeta Frozen Semen Bull Station' is transported in exclusively-made insulated Liquid Nitrogen cans to the Central Frozen Semen Bank at Guwahati and thereafter transported to the 15 Frozen semen Banks (FSB) situated at strategic locations.
"These FSBs function as storage depot for 'Frozen Semen' (FS) used for field Artificial Insemination (AI). Each FSB has a 5000 litre bulk silo for storing the storage media of 'Frozen Semen (FS) - Liquid Nitrogen (LN) which stores the FS in -196 degree centigrade. FSBs also have Liquid Nitrogen vans, which offers doorstep delivery of Frozen Semen and Liquid Nitrogen even to the interior and most rural AI centers of the districts covered under the particular FSB.
"The semen collected at Barpeta FSB is transferred to Khanapara central FSB and Nagaon FSB and finally to the field AI Centres. The semen is transferred according to requirement from 55 litre big containers to 3 litre portable containers, delivering LN & FS to perform Artificial Insemination at the farmer's doorstep."