Coimbatore : Isha Agro Movement has conducted a training programme for farmers on traditional remedies in livestock management.

The training was imparted to 50 farmers yesterday by Dr. Punniamurthy, a livestock management expert, who has served as the professor and head of ethno-veterinary herbal research and training centre, Thanjavur.

His area of expertise is researching herbal varieties for providing remedies to cattle and livestock affected by diseases, an IAM statement said today.

About two years ago, when cattle in Tamil Nadu were affected by a disease called as Gomari, his preparation helped farmers overcome the risk.

If a cow, buffalo or fowl suffers from fever, foot and mouth disease or other ailment, all that a farmer had to do was to turn to his garden or anjaraipetti (spice box) in the kitchen for medicines, said Punniamurthy.

He shared his knowledge of remedies based on plants and spices available locally so that the farmer could attend to any illness of his cows, birds or other animals in the farm at the earliest and also save money.

The programme was a combination of theory and practical classes with live demonstration in Isha’s maatumanai, (cowshed) which has about 250 native cows and bulls. Native cows were an integral part of traditional farming and it was important that farmers were equipped with the knowledge to handle them.

Organic farm waste should be consumed by the indigenous cattle and only then the milk could be called as indigenous, he said.

IAM, an offshoot of Isha’ environmental initiative, Project GreenHands, supports farmers to make a transition from chemical farming to sustainable agriculture through farmer-to-farmer learning and structured training programmes.