Karanagiri, a village 280 kms away from Bangalore, the IT capital of India; people here raise cows to sell their urine and dung, but interestingly not milk. A litre of cow milk is half a dollar in India, on the contrary, a litre of cow urine goes for close to $3 and the dung/kg costs about $2 in this hamlet. Surprisingly, just 30 litres are milked out of the total 600 cows and a large quantity is left behind for the calf.
The urine is put into various Indian medicinal uses to cure swelling, flatulence, worm infestation, haemorrhoids, albino, seizures, sterility, and so on. Cow urine is an age-old panacea for many illnesses in Ayurvedic treatments. On the other hand, cow dung is mostly applied as an eco-friendly pesticide and excellent manure, besides they are used to produce painkiller balms and tooth powder. Even the dung is dried and rolled as small globules to use in various treatments, and also for making disinfectants.
The organized production of urine and dung started a decade ago in Shri Ramachandrapura Ashram at a village in Shimoga district of the Southern Indian State of Karnataka with its capital as Bangalore. The ashram headed by Shri Shri Raghaveshwara Bharati imparted the knowledge to villagers to attain self-sufficiency through these means. He taught the inmates how to look after and make these animals reciprocate for their upkeep. The ashram came into prominence when they conducted World Cow Conference in 2007.
The ashram is home to 32 different Indian breeds with a total of 600 cows. Each breed is housed in separate enclaves and not allowed to mingle with other breeds as a precaution against diseases. However, one has to take meticulous care while collecting the urine to a container since the same gathered from the ground made it inferior. The urine collected early in the morning between 5 and 6 after long hours of sleep is considered to be the best for desired purposes. The procedure to get the end product involves 14 hours of filtration, and 10 litres of urine give 6 to 7 litres of usable product.
The medicines are sold across the country and even exported to many parts of the globe. The success has prompted the ashram authorities to start an awareness campaign and have already received assurance from 47,000 families across the region to engage in the same activities. The ashram’s administrative secretary K. Krishnaprasad said that their goal is to see each house in rural India to have at least one cow. He further remarked that they discouraged people to sell animals to butchers since the livestock is productive life long and one did not have to solely depend on milk which was limited to a period. This September, the ashram will conduct another awareness campaign which stretches 20000 kms across India and is expected to complete in 108 days.
In the ancient Hindu Vedas of India (circa 2500 BC), the slaughter of the cow/bull is prohibited, and the cow is regarded as a sacred animal totem of the Hindus. The multiple utilities of this domesticated animal to humanity are believed to be the reason behind the Vedas to insist on prohibition of slaughter and consumption of the same.