Singhwa Khas (Hisar), August 11
Around 2,000 persons enjoyed a feast hosted by farmer Kapoor Singh in Singhwa Khas village here today. The occasion was the farewell of a Murrah buffalo! But Lakshmi is no ordinary buffalo. She has triumphed at many beauty and milk-yield contests and had fetched the highest price of Rs 25 lakh in the country. She would start for her new home in Andhra Pradesh in the morning tomorrow.

Dr KS Dangi, Director General, Animal Husbandry; Dr Inderjeet Singh, Director, Central Buffalo Research Institute; Sophie Llewelyn, a Canadian research scholar who is studying Murrah-human relations in Haryana, were among those who attended the farewell ceremony.

Dr Dangi said Lakshmi has set a new price benchmark and it would encourage cattle-rearing farmers to improve the quality of Murrah breed with the use of artificial insemination, providing better feed and health-care facilities to their cattle like Kapoor.

“Murrah is black gold for cattle farmers in Haryana. This has become a national success story. It is emerging as a viable alternative to farming,” he stated. Sophie, a scholar from McGill University in Montreal, said that Lakshmi’s beauty seemed to have attracted the Andhra farmer Rajiv Sarpanch to shell out an exorbitant amount.

“I don’t think she would yield milk worth Rs 25 lakh in her lifespan, but she is attractive. She will continue to dominate cattle contests in the years to come. I have heard that the Andhra farmer has acquired her for participation in beauty contests in his state where huge prize money is at stake,” she said. Dr Rajender Singh said that besides beauty, her progeny was also important. “Her issues will be the elite buffaloes/bulls and are likely to be equally attractive and high milk-yielding”. Kapoor Singh stated that the Andhra farmer had offered Rs 10 lakh for Lakshmi’s 11-month-old calf but he refused. “This bull calf is the seed that will help produce more buffaloes of Lakshmi’s grade,” he said. Getting emotional while handing over the reins of Lakshmi to two cattle traders who are representing the Andhra farmer who opted to stay away from the limelight, Kapoor said that she was the costliest single thing with his family and, in fact, in the entire village.

“We have no single article worth this much - no car, no house and not even an acre which costs Rs 20 lakh in the village,” he said. Kapoor’s son Anand told The Tribune that Lakshmi’s buyers had requested him to take care of her till Monday morning when they would start their journey for their home state.