Haryana’s Three Deshi Cows: Hariana, Mewati, and Belahi
By Sumit
Haryana is not a large state. But within its flat plains, its river-fed borderlands, and its Shivalik foothills, three distinct indigenous cow breeds have quietly sustained civilizations — ploughing fields, pulling carts, nursing calves, and giving milk long before a single drop of Holstein blood entered the country. The Hariana, the Mewati, and the Belahi are not famous the way the Gir or Sahiwal are famous. They do not command headlines. But they carry in their bones the agricultural and pastoral memory of northern India, and their survival matters far more than most people realize.
1. Hariana — The Pride of the Indo-Gangetic Plains
If there is one cow that belongs to Haryana the way the Ganga belongs to Uttar Pradesh — completely, historically, indelibly — it is the Hariana. She is the state’s namesake breed, the workhorse of North India’s most fertile farming belt, and one of the great dual-purpose cattle of the subcontinent.
Hariana is one of the most prominent dual-purpose cattle breeds of the Indo-Gangetic plain, named according to the breeding tract of the breed in Haryana state. The breed was earlier known as “Hisar” and “Hansi” according to the places of origin. The breeding tract includes Hisar, Rohtak, Sonepat, Gurgaon, Jind, and Jhajjar districts of Haryana.
She is immediately recognizable. Typically, the breed is white or light grey in colour with a coffin-shaped skull. In bulls, the colour between the fore and hind quarters is relatively dark or dark grey. The animals have a long and narrow face, well-marked bony prominence at the centre of the poll, and small horns. There is a cleanliness, almost an elegance, to the Hariana — a tall, well-built animal that carries herself with quiet authority.
The Hariana is an important dual-purpose cattle breed of India. The cows are fairly good milk yielders, producing about 10 to 15 litres of milk a day, and the bulls are excellent at work. Milk production per lactation is 1,400 to 2,300 kg with average milk fat of 4.3 to 5.3%. The breed is well suited for transport — capable of pulling a one-ton load at two miles per hour and covering 20 miles a day.
The breed is mainly maintained for bullock production, as the bulls are powerful work animals, and therefore more attention is paid to managing male calves. For generations, the Hariana bullock was the tractor of northern India — patient, strong, disease-resistant, and available to even the smallest farmer. This indigenous breed of cattle is alarmingly close to extinction due to the trend for crossbreeding cattle for high milk yield and the inclination towards rearing buffaloes. At its estimated current population of around 16.5 lakh, it remains a breed under pressure — a reminder that when we mechanize farming without preserving what came before, we lose something irreplaceable.
2. Mewati — The Borderlander’s Companion
The Mewati cow belongs to a geography that has always been a crossing point — the ancient Mewat region where Haryana, Rajasthan, and Uttar Pradesh converge. Like the people of that border country, the Mewati is a blend: powerful, adaptable, carrying the influences of several great breeds in her bloodline.
Mewati, also known as “Kosi” or “Mehwati”, is a draught-purpose breed. The breeding tract includes Gurgaon and Faridabad districts of Haryana, Alwar and Bharatpur districts of Rajasthan, and Mathura district of Uttar Pradesh. Mewati cattle are powerful and docile, useful for heavy ploughing, carting, and drawing water from deep wells. They are similar to the Hariana breed but show traces of influence from the Gir, Kankrej, and Malvi breeds.
Mewati cattle are usually white, with the neck, shoulders, and quarters of a darker shade. Horns are small to medium in size and emerge outwards, upwards, and then inwards in the majority of animals. The face is long and narrow with a straight, sometimes slightly bulging forehead. In some animals, patches of Gir-like colouring appear — the visible trace of that distant genetic contribution from Gujarat.
The bulls are known for their strength and endurance and are hence used for agricultural and carting purposes as well as for drawing water from deep wells. The cows are said to be good milkers. The average lactation yield is around 958 kg. The Mewati is not India’s greatest dairy cow, but she is a reliable, honest, dual-purpose animal who has fed and ploughed for farming families across three states for centuries.
Like the other Indian breeds, the Mewati has good adaptability to extreme climatic conditions and can easily withstand environmental stress and disease. However, in recent years, the population of this breed has gone down considerably and the situation is alarming. The primary factors contributing to this sharp decline are the adoption of crossbreeding for enhanced milk productivity, mechanization of agricultural operations diminishing the utility of bullocks, and the shrinking of common grazing land. The Mewati’s story is, in this way, the story of every draught breed in modern India — made redundant by the tractor, pushed aside by the jersey, and quietly disappearing.
3. Belahi — The Wandering Cow of the Shivalik Foothills
The Belahi is the least known of Haryana’s three deshi breeds — and perhaps the most remarkable. She belongs not to the plains but to the hills; not to the settled farmer but to the wandering Gujjar pastoralist; not to any fixed address but to the seasonal migration routes of the Shivalik range. She is a nomad’s cow, shaped by movement itself.
Belahi breed of cattle are also known as Morni or Desi. The breeding tract lies in the foothills of the Shivalik in Haryana state and includes Ambala, Panchkula, and Yamunanagar districts of Haryana and Chandigarh. The term “Belaha” is used to describe a mixture of colours.
Belahi cattle have a reddish coat colour with a white face, white dewlap, and black muzzle in the majority of animals. Animals are medium-sized and possess a distinct phenotypic appearance. The bulls are used for transportation and draught power in agricultural fields. Young bull calves of Belahi cattle are sold to farmers in Himachal Pradesh, where they are used to plough hilly terrain.
The average standard lactation yield is 1,014 kg, ranging from 182 to 2,092 kg, with average milk fat of 5.25%, ranging from 2.37% to 7.89%. That fat percentage — averaging 5.25% and reaching nearly 8% in high-performing individuals — is exceptional for a breed maintained entirely on grazing with minimal supplementary feeding.
The Belahi is well adapted to hot and humid climates and grazes more when sunshine increases. It can thrive on very low-quality grass and roughage and produce high-quality milk at the least input cost. These cattle are hardy and enduring, resistant to endo-ectoparasites and other contagious diseases, including mastitis. They are exclusively kept on grazing — only milch cows receive any concentrate feed, and only at milking time.
What makes the Belahi’s situation uniquely urgent is her small numbers. According to the last count, there are more than 20,000 cattle heads in the breeding tract — a population requiring active conservation due to continuous decline in pastures and water bodies in the native tract. The Department of Animal Husbandry and Dairying, Haryana, has launched the Gausamvardhan scheme for the conservation and development of indigenous cattle, with the specific aim of identifying top-quality germplasm and encouraging farmers to rear better-yielding Belahi cattle.
The Gujjar pastoralists who keep the Belahi alive do so entirely through a community-maintained purity — crossbreeding by artificial insemination has never been allowed by the animal owners, who maintain and propagate pure Belahi cattle. In an age when most indigenous breeds are being diluted into irrelevance, this stands as a rare and admirable act of living conservation.
Three Breeds, One Heritage
The Hariana, the Mewati, and the Belahi represent three distinct faces of Haryana’s relationship with the cow. The Hariana is the region’s institutional pride — the great dual-purpose breed of the plains, recognised, documented, and still present in meaningful numbers but declining under the pressure of crossbreeding. The Mewati is the border country’s unsung backbone — a powerful animal who served three states across centuries and now stands diminished, her bullocks no longer needed in a mechanized world. The Belahi is the hidden treasure — a migratory, fat-rich, low-input milch breed in the care of Gujjar pastoralists who have kept her bloodlines pure through sheer communal commitment.
To lose any of these three would be to erase an irreplaceable thread in the fabric of North Indian agricultural civilization. They are not merely breeds. They are living archives.
Sources: Dairy Knowledge Portal (ICAR) | Save Indian Cows / Surabhivana Gaushala | Wikipedia — Hariana Cattle | ResearchGate — “Belahi Cattle: Uniform but Distinct Germplasm of Haryana” (Vohra et al., 2012) | *Indian Journal of Animal Sciences* — “Phenotypic Characterization, Management and Performance of Belahi Cattle” (Vohra et al., 2016) | ICAR-NBAGR Breed Registration Records
