Those living in the mountainous areas used to enjoy abundant milk supply in the past but are now facing a shortage of milk due to factors like migration to the plains. The number of cowsheds has come down in the mountainous regions of Tehri district as people find it hard to rear cows without adequate number of people to work in animal husbandry. Due to the decreased supply of milk from the mountainous regions, about 5,000 litres of packaged milk is also supplied daily from the plains to New Tehri and other parts of the district.
The situation has changed even in the villages which once supplied hundreds of litres of milk to the local markets every day. Today the inhabitants of these very villages are meeting their milk requirements with packaged or milk powder. The scarcity of cattle is also adversely affecting agriculture in the mountainous regions as due to the shortage of the cow-dung manure the use of chemical fertilisers is now on the rise.
large scale migration of people is one of the reasons behind the decrease in milk production here. Earlier, in joint families, two to four cattle used to supply milk throughout the year, which is not the scenario anymore due to migration. The hill cows produce less milk and no efforts have been made so far to improve their breed. At present a hill buffalo produces three to four litres of milk a day whereas a hill cow produces two to four litres of milk a day. Though the milk of the hill bovines is believed to be better in quality than the milk of bovines in the plains, the limited quantity has led to increase in adulteration of milk.
An elder of Chopadia village Mast Ram opined that due to young people migrating to towns and people showing less interest, cattle rearing has become marginalized in the region. He said that even those rearing cattle in villages were finding it difficult to provide fodder for the animals. The failure of the authorities to address such problems has forced the once self reliant locals to depend on packaged milk being supplied from the plains.