vadodara the story of krishna the legendary bull from gujarat who was imported into brazil from bhavnagar 58 years ago has almost turned into a folklore for those associated with the dairy sector there but a little known fact is that krishnas great grandmother herself was a gift that the maharaja of bhavnagar had received from the darbar saheb of jasdan my grandfather ala khachar who was the darbarsaheb of jasdan had gifted mayar in 1930s to his highness krishnakumar sinhji and it is mayar who is great grandmother of krishna said satyajit khachar scion of the erstwhile princely state of jasdan and a known breeder of gir cowsin those days royalties used to gift each other good breeds of horses and cattle my grandfather had gifted mayar to the maharaja as a token of their relationship said khachar who himself owns 150 pure breed of gir cowsjasdans historic connection with brazil is still cherished at the south american country where onofre ribeiro manages 600 pure gir cattle at the estancia jasdan farm located in paraopeba locality in minas gerais state 90 km from capital city belo horizonte we maintain a center for preservation of the race with a historical heritage here ribeiro whose father joao feliciano ribeiro started with the gir cows in the early 1930s initially as a merchant and later as a breeder with animals coming from india in the first importsfrom the very beginning my father tried to select the animals with a tripod race docility and milk production he said we currently have the same motto we preserve generations of this animals we use technologies like ivf which counts for 70 of the animals and also clone higher animals we also participate in the evaluations of milk production together with government agencies such as embrapa and the associations of the breed abcgilbrazilian association of breeders of gir leiteiro and abcz brazilian association of breeders of zebu said ribeiro who is also an advisory member of the gir breedthe gir cows at his farm in brazil in the first lactation in 305 days give an average of 4500 kg of milk and in the second lactation they shoot more than 6500 kg of milk in 305 days almost 80 of the milk produced in brazil has the contribution of the gir leiteiro be pure or in crosses with european races especially to holstein this crossing produces the adapted girolando animal with high milk yield in the tropics he said ribeiro takes pride in the fact that his family selects the gir for over 80 years and has lived exclusively from the production of milk and from the sale of animals which are used for breeding we work with respect and dedication to these animals that we consider sacred as their origin in india he said thanks to gir cows the ribeiro family is in continuous touch with jasdans royal scion in 2011 around 650 embryos of the gir breed were flown to brazil to