The Red Sindhi cattle are a highly popular Zebu dairy breed originating from the Sindh province of Pakistan. They are widely kept for milk production across countries like Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and others. Their milk production is known to be about 12 to 15 kg per day. To take advantage of their tropical adaptations, such as heat tolerance, tick resistance, disease resistance, and high fertility at high temperatures, they have been widely used for crossbreeding with temperate dairy breeds in many countries, including India, the United States, Australia, Sri Lanka, and others.
The Red Sindhi are distinguishable by their deep reddish brown to yellowish red color, with most being deep red. They are also smaller, rounder, and have a more typical dairy form with short, curved horns, as compared to the taller Tharparkar or White Sindhi, which has a shape more typical of Zebu draft breeds and longer lyre-shaped horns. The bulls of the breed are usually of a darker color than the cows.
The Red Sindhi cattle have been crossbred with Holstein-Friesian, Brown Swiss, and Danish Red to improve beef and dual-purpose cattle in tropical countries. They are meaty enough to produce good beef calves and the high milk production helps give a fast-growing calf that is ready for market at one year. Despite being slightly smaller and producing less milk per animal than the Sahiwal, it has been used to improve commercial dairy herds in India and Pakistan by breeding to Sahiwal bulls for a few generations. The resulting cows, which are three-quarters Sahiwal and one-quarter Red Sindhi, cannot be distinguished from pure Sahiwal cattle. While they are used for milk production in Brazil, they are not as popular as other Zebu breeds.
In the middle of the 20th century, some Red Sindhi cows were imported to Brazil.
Content and photo source: Wikipedia.org
About Red Sindhi Cattle
