A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science, School of Environment, Resources and Development

Thesis (M.Sc.) - Asian Institute of Technology, 1988

Introduction of a milk producing animal was suggested as a solution to improve the cash flow and the net returns from the livestock sub - system in the A. F. E. Integrated Crop/Livestock/Fish Farm. A demand-driven bio-economic simulation model of a one-cow herd has been developed to compare three animal types, native swamp buffalo, dual purpose river buffalo and cross- bred dairy cow. The herd structure was generated for ten years with some stochastic biological events, and the dry matter, metabolisable energy and digestible nitrogen inputs from pasture and rice straw has been input, to determine the needs of concentrate feed to achieve the biological potential of the herd. Considering the outputs of milk, meat and calves, a partial budgeting was done to compare the economics of the three animal types, replicating the experiment ten times. A complete economic analysis was also performed to see the economic feasibility of the three animal types reared for milk. The model has been validated, and the sensitivity for milk price and combination of milk price and concentrate cost, analysed. Dairy cow was the best, while milk production from the native buffalo was not at all profitable.