UPHESC Assistant Professor Animal Husbandry & Dairying 2025 PYQs

Concept: Bhadawari (Agra–Etawah region of UP and Bhind–Morena of MP) is famous for the highest milk fat among Indian buffaloes, about 6–12.5% (average ~8%).

1. Murrah gives the highest milk yield, but its fat is ~7%.
2. Mehsana and Surti have fat around 7–8%, less than Bhadawari.
3. Bhadawari milk is therefore preferred for ghee making.

Short trick: Bhadawari = 'Butter-fat buffalo' (B for B); Murrah = 'More milk'.

Concept: The Key Village Scheme, started in 1952 (First Five-Year Plan), was India's first systematic, all-India programme for cattle improvement.

1. It combined artificial insemination, castration of scrub bulls, disease control and fodder development in compact village blocks.
2. ICDP came later (1964–65); NLM started in 2014–15 and Rashtriya Gokul Mission in December 2014.

Short trick: Order: KVS 1952 → ICDP 1964 → Operation Flood 1970 → RGM/NLM 2014.

Concept: As per FAOSTAT 2019, India ranked 3rd in the world in egg production, after China and the USA.

1. China is first by a wide margin, the USA second.
2. India produced about 114 billion eggs in 2019–20 (BAHS).
3. In broiler meat India ranked lower (about 5th–6th).

Short trick: Eggs: China – USA – India (C-U-I).

Concept: The Landrace is the native bacon-type pig of Denmark (Danish Landrace), long-bodied with 16–17 pairs of ribs and drooping ears.

1. Tamworth – England (Staffordshire), red bacon breed.
2. Yorkshire / Large White Yorkshire – England (Yorkshire county).
3. So only Landrace is Danish.

Short trick: Landrace = Danish bacon; Yorkshire & Tamworth = English.

Concept: On the recommendation of the Royal Commission on Agriculture (chaired by Lord Linlithgow, 1928), Sir Arthur Olver was appointed in 1929–30 as the first Animal Husbandry Expert to the Imperial Council of Agricultural Research.

1. Lord Linlithgow headed the Royal Commission, he was not the expert.
2. Dr. J.A. Voelcker reported on Indian agriculture in 1889–93.
3. Dr. Norman C. Wright surveyed the Indian dairy industry in 1937.

Short trick: Voelcker 1893 → Linlithgow Commission 1928 → Olver 1930 → Wright 1937.

Concept: The 1972 livestock census counted about 138.5 million poultry (fowls + ducks); standard animal-husbandry texts give the duck share of this as roughly 11 million, the rest being fowls.

1. For comparison, the 1977 census recorded about 10.1 million ducks out of 160.9 million poultry, so the duck flock in the 1970s was of the order of 10–11 million.
2. Two or six million is far too low; of the printed figures, eleven million is the one given for 1972.
3. Ducks are reared mainly in the eastern and southern coastal states (West Bengal, Assam, Odisha, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu).

Short trick: 1970s India: ducks ≈ 10–11 million (1972 ≈ 11 million).

Concept: A mutation is a sudden, discrete, heritable change in the genetic material (genotype) – the ultimate source of new variation.

1. Replication is copying of DNA, not a change.
2. Heredity is transmission of traits from parents to offspring.
3. Sex reversal is a change of phenotypic sex, not necessarily a heritable genotype change.

Short trick: Sudden + heritable change = Mutation (Hugo de Vries).

Concept: Narrow-sense heritability $h^2=V_A/V_P$ – the ratio of additive genetic variance to phenotypic variance. Broad sense $H^2=V_G/V_P$.

1. The printed options are Vo/Vp, Vc/Vp, Vp/Vp and Vi/Vp – none of them is $V_A/V_P$ (or even $V_G/V_P$).
2. $V_P/V_P=1$ always; $V_I$ is interaction (epistatic) variance and $V_C$ is common-environment variance.
3. So, as printed, no option is correct and the question is treated as a bonus.

Short trick: Narrow = Additive only: $h^2=V_A/V_P$.

Concept: Response to selection $R=h^{2}S$ depends on narrow-sense heritability, i.e. on additive gene action, which is passed faithfully from parent to offspring.

1. Dominance and epistatic effects are created by particular gene combinations and break up in each generation, so they are not fixed by selection.
2. Traits with high additive variance (e.g. growth, fat %) respond well to selection; non-additive traits are improved by crossbreeding (heterosis).

Short trick: Additive → Selection; Non-additive → Crossbreeding.

Concept: In grading-up, each generation of females is mated to a purebred sire, so the improver's inheritance becomes $1-(1/2{)}^n$.

1. F1: 50%
2. F2: 75%
3. F3: $1-1/8=87.5\mathrm{\%}$ (F4 = 93.75%, F5 = 96.9%).
4. After 5 generations the grade is accepted as almost purebred.

Short trick: Each generation halves the remaining native blood: 50 → 75 → 87.5.

Concept: Line breeding is a mild form of inbreeding in which matings are planned to keep a high relationship to an outstanding ancestor (usually a sire).

1. Close breeding = mating of very closely related animals (sire × daughter, full sibs).
2. Top crossing/top breeding = using sires of a different line on an inbred population.
3. Concentrating the blood of one ancestral sire = line breeding.

Short trick: Line breeding = 'keep the LINE of a great ancestor'.

Concept: Heritability (narrow sense) $h^2=V_A/V_P$ – the fraction of phenotypic variation due to additive genes.

1. It ranges from 0 to 1: low (<0.1) for fertility, medium for milk yield (~0.3), high (>0.4) for fat % and body measurements.
2. Gametogenesis, polygenesis and heterogenesis are unrelated terms.

Short trick: $h^2$ = Additive ÷ Phenotypic.

Concept: NDDB began its embryo-transfer (ET) programme in 1987 with the central ET laboratory at Sabarmati Ashram Gaushala (SAG), Bidaj (Gujarat); the first buffalo calf by ET there was born in December 1987.

1. 1985 and 1986 are before the Bidaj ET lab was set up, so they are ruled out.
2. Later milestones: first buffalo calf from a frozen-thawed embryo (1991), first IVF buffalo calf 'Pratham' at NDRI (1990), cloned buffalo 'Samrupa/Garima' at NDRI (2009–10).

Short trick: Bidaj ET → 1987 (year the lab started), calf at year-end: December 1987.

Concept: Repeatability is the correlation between repeated records of the same trait in the same animal (e.g. milk yield in successive lactations).

1. $r=(V_G+V_{Ep})/V_P$ – includes genetic plus permanent environmental variance, so repeatability ≥ heritability.
2. It helps predict an animal's future performance (MPPA) and decide culling.

Short trick: Same animal, same trait, different times = REPEAT-ability.

Concept: NRC (Dairy Cattle, 2001) recommends 0.3 mg Se per kg diet DM for dairy cows in every stage – early, mid and late lactation as well as dry period.

1. 0.3 ppm is also the maximum legal supplementation limit (FDA) in many countries.
2. 1–2 mg/kg would approach toxicity (chronic selenosis: 'alkali disease', hoof and hair loss).

Short trick: Selenium = 0.3 ppm throughout ('Se = 0.3, see?').

Concept: Good hay is green forage dried to about 15% moisture (85% DM) so that it can be stored without moulding or heating.

1. Fresh green fodder has 70–85% moisture; it must be cured down to ~15%.
2. Above 20% moisture, hay heats, moulds and may even catch fire; much below 10–12% leaves shatter and are lost.

Short trick: Hay = 15% moisture; Silage = 65–70% moisture.

Concept: Rennin (chymosin) is secreted by the abomasum (true stomach) of young calves to clot milk; it is not an intestinal enzyme.

1. Lactase, aminopeptidase and nucleosidase are brush-border (intestinal juice/succus entericus) enzymes of the small intestine.
2. Rennin converts casein to paracasein which clots with Ca²⁺, slowing milk passage.

Short trick: Rennin – Rumen-side stomach (abomasum) of calf, not intestine.

Concept: Urea may supply up to one-third of dietary N; the safe ceiling is 1% of total DM (or 2–3% of concentrate), which for an adult cow works out to about 100 g urea per day.

1. Feed it only to adult ruminants (not calves below 6 months) along with readily fermentable carbohydrate (molasses/grain).
2. Introduce gradually and mix uniformly; excess causes ammonia toxicity (bloat, tremors, death).

Short trick: Urea: 1% of DM, 3% of concentrate, ≈100 g/adult/day.

Concept: ICAR/Sen–Ray feeding standard: production requirement for 1 kg buffalo milk (7% fat) is 63 g DCP and 460 g TDN.

1. For 1 kg cow milk (4–4.5% fat) it is about 45–50 g DCP and 315–330 g TDN.
2. Higher fat and SNF in buffalo milk raise its energy content, hence the larger allowance.

Short trick: Buffalo milk: '63–460'; Cow milk: '45–316'.

Concept: Bypass (rumen-undegradable, RUP/UDP) protein escapes microbial breakdown in the rumen and is digested in the abomasum and small intestine.

1. RDP is the opposite – broken down to ammonia by rumen microbes.
2. NPN (urea) is not protein at all.
3. Bypass protein is made by formaldehyde or heat treatment of oil cakes and is useful for high yielders.

Short trick: Bypass = 'escapes' the rumen.