Bali cattle and artifical insemination

BALI CATTLE  AND ARTIFICIAL INSEMINATION

Bali Cattle? Who is not familiar with this typical brick red creature? The Bali cattle are often seen along the road in Bali or in other areas in Indonesia. It is possible due to their highest population, based on BPS data, compare with the other types of cattle in Indonesia. In addition, we should be proud because of the information read in several scientific paper about Bali cattle stated that the cattle is a native Indonesian cattle, especially Bali

If we pay more attention on  results of research conducted by several Bali cattle experts, it is mentioned that there are many advantages of Bali cattles i.e very adaptable to the environment in which the cows are raised or in other words their food can be syncronized to their environment. Their maintenances do not also require special time to take care of or those can be done as a sideline business because they do not need a large amount of food. Theoretically, the amount of food consumed in fresh form is 10% of their body weight. The amount of foods eaten is directly proportional to their weight. It means that the higher of their body weight, the more food they need. If we compared to exotic cattle, the weight of Bali cattle is much smaller due to the less amount of food eaten. Because of some of their advantages, the Bali cattles are more preferred to be raised by livestock farmers in Indonesia.

On the other hand, today there is something worried about the decline in genetic quality and population of Bali cattle. The indicators used are the number of productive dam of weight over 300 kg is very limited, calf birth weight is relatively light, milk production is relatively low, calf mortality is quite high and the body condition is small (Alit, 2009). Diwyanto and Praharani (2010) stated that the Bali cattle population did not develop well due to high demand for beef. As a result, uncontrolled slaughter of livestock occurs, many productive females are slaughtered, ineffective selection occurs in the  population due to negative selection of growth, body size of livestock and high calf mortality. On the other hand, one of the causes of genetic decline in Bali cattle is inbreeding. This breeding occurs because of the scarcity of bulls, due to negative selection, where males with high body weight are sent outside the area and economically the price of the bulls are more expensive than that of female cattle. If this indication occurs continuously it will be very worrying because Bali cattle can be extinct. Our children and grandchildren will only be able to see the whereabouts of Bali cattle from photographs circulating on the internet.

Artificial Insemination (AI) is a method of marriage that can be done to prevent the extinction of Bali cattle. Why is that? By AI, it  is expected to increase the genetic potential of Bali cattle, because the  semen used is the result of selection, then processed in the form of frozen semen ("straw") so that it can be utilized more and faster, also the genes from good males will spread more a lot and faster. Thus our goal to increase the population and quality of Bali cattle will be achieved.