MANSEHRA: The livestock research station at Jaba, which was established some six decades ago, has achieved a milestone in the country’s history after it recently brought to life five kids of a famous breed of goat through artificial insemination.

“Now Pakistan stands among the countries where goats are born through artificial inseminations as we have achieved a milestone after five kids of goat were artificially inseminated at our station,” said Dr Waheedullah, the station’s director, while speaking to mediapersons here on Sunday.

The livestock experiment station, which is situated some 20km off the Mansehra-Balakot road, was established in 1954 at 551 acres of forest land with the support of USAID, which had also provided 80 sheep.

Dr Waheedullah said that the station, which was established to promote and increase local species of sheep, Ranbuillent and Kaghani, later started experiments to increase the meat and wool production.

“This institution has distinction of creating another species of sheep through combination of semen of two local sheep and named it as Ramghani, which is now commonly found across country, particularly in mountainous areas,” he said.

He said that the National Agriculture Research Council (NARC), Islamabad, keeping in view the previous achievements of the station, had tasked it with artificial insemination of rare international goat species.

The director of the research station said that NARC imported exotic African goat, Boer, known for its meat, and Switzerland goat, Sannen, famous for milk production, and handed them over to the station. “The exotic international breeds were given to us last year for conducting trial on them which we achieved and we are proud of it,” he said.

Dr Waheedullah said that the livestock experiment station had now started imparting training on artificial insemination process to veterinary doctors and recently it had completed training of 100 people.

“We have also designed an indigenous steel machine which is used in artificial insemination process as we are expecting some 50 artificially inseminated goats,” he said.

Meanwhile, the district development advisory committee chairman, MPA Sardar Zahoor, visited the station and announced Rs5 million for construction of a water channel to the station.

Published in Dawn January 19th , 2015

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