What the National Livestock Census Says About India's Dairy Herd
Every four to five years, the Government of India counts the country's entire livestock population, household by household. Here's what the most recent count tells us about the scale of India's dairy sector — and what that means for fodder preparation.
The headline numbers
The 20th Livestock Census (2019), conducted by the Department of Animal Husbandry & Dairying, surveyed over 26.5 crore households and non-household enterprises across the country. It counted:
- 192.49 million cattle
- 109.85 million buffalo
- 74.26 million sheep
- 148.88 million goats
- 535.78 million total livestock, including a smaller mithun and yak population
Cattle, buffalo, mithun, and yak together make up India's bovine population of 303.76 million — and of those, 125.34 million are milch animals: cows and buffaloes actually being milked or maintained for milk production. That's the working core of India's dairy sector, and every one of them is fed fodder every single day.
What this means for Chhattisgarh and Odisha specifically
The same census puts Chhattisgarh's cattle population at roughly 10.0 million and Odisha's at roughly 9.9 million — nearly 20 million cattle between the two states alone, before even counting buffalo. That's a genuinely large, geographically concentrated dairy and draught-animal population, and it's the reason fodder preparation at scale is a daily reality for such a large number of farms across these two states specifically.
Why the scale of the numbers matters for how you feed
A herd this size, spread across millions of small and mid-sized farms rather than a small number of large commercial operations, is exactly why fodder preparation method matters so much in India specifically. Every kilogram of fodder wasted to selective feeding, and every extra hour spent chopping by hand, is multiplied across a dairy sector built on this scale. It's also why government schemes have long treated fodder-processing equipment — both hand-driven and power-driven chaff cutters — as a distinct, recognized category of farm equipment rather than an afterthought.
For a closer look at where your own farm sits on the path from manual fodder cutting to a powered machine, see our guide on the fodder-cutting upgrade ladder.
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