This is a rising theme. Agriculture, horticulture and livestock together moved from 5.0% of the Geography unit in the older papers to 10.5% in the recent ones — the sharpest increase of any block except biodiversity. It is also the theme where the gap between what textbooks print and what the state currently publishes is widest, and that gap is where marks are lost.

Rajasthan is a livestock state in a way no other Indian state is. It holds about a tenth of the country's livestock, produces nearly half its wool, and keeps more than five-sixths of its camels. Those three facts, with their shares attached, answer most of what is asked.

Two rules govern this page. Every figure carries its source and its year, because livestock numbers move annually and census figures move only once a decade. Breed-to-district mapping is taken from the state textbooks; every number is taken from the Government of Rajasthan's current Economic Review, because the textbooks' figures are two decades old.

1. Rajasthan's share of India — the table that carries the marks

Learn this table before anything else on the page. Every share here is a potential one-mark question, and the spread between them is the point.

GovtSource: Government of Rajasthan, Directorate of Economics and Statistics, Economic Review 2025-26, "Livestock for Prosperous Farming", which attributes the population to Livestock Census 2019. The state's own Review still uses the 2019 census, so that is the current published basis.

Read the order carefully, because intuition gets it wrong. Rajasthan is a cattle state in the popular imagination and its cattle share is the lowest on the list at 7.24%. Its goat share is double that. A question asking which species Rajasthan holds the largest national share of is answered by the camel, and by an enormous margin.

The two totals

GovtSource: Economic Review 2025-26, citing Livestock Census 2019 — the 20th Livestock Census. Poultry is counted separately from livestock and is not inside the 568.01 lakh.

And the two output shares

GovtSource: Economic Review 2025-26. Note the year: these are 2023-24 production shares, not census figures, and they move annually.

Hold the wool figure against the sheep figure and the chapter's central fact appears. Rajasthan has 10.64% of India's sheep and produces 47.53% of its wool. Nearly half the country's wool from a tenth of its sheep. That is not a productivity miracle; it is a breed story — the state's sheep are wool breeds rather than meat breeds, which is what section 3 is about. If a Mains answer needs one sentence on why Rajasthan matters to Indian animal husbandry, it is that one.

The same figures as ranks

A share is not a rank, and RPSC asks for the rank. A state can hold a large share and still stand sixth, which is exactly what happens with cattle. The ranks below come from the Government of India's own comparison of the 2012 and 2019 censuses, not from the shares above, and they are the form the question usually takes.

GovtSource: Department of Animal Husbandry and Dairying, Government of India, 20th Livestock Census, Key Results, report file dated 16 October 2019, Tables 3, 8, 10, 12, 14, 18, 20 and 22. Ranks were read off the state tables in that file, not computed from the shares in the table above.

Two of these ranks are the whole point of the section. Rajasthan is first in goats and only sixth in cattle, and an option that promotes it up the cattle list is the standard trap. It is fourth in sheep and first in wool, which is the same breed argument made twice.

The ranks in milk and wool come from a different document and a later year.

GovtSource: Department of Animal Husbandry and Dairying, Basic Animal Husbandry Statistics 2025, released December 2025, estimates for 2024-25. Note the basis. This is a later year than the Economic Review's shares above, which are for 2023-24 and give wool 47.53% and milk 14.51%. The two are not in conflict: different years, different publishers. Quote whichever you use with its year attached.

The absence is as useful as the presence. Rajasthan is first in wool and second in milk and does not reach the top five in either eggs or meat. Its livestock economy is a milk and fibre economy, not a meat economy, and that single line answers a good deal of Mains framing.

The direction of travel: the herd is shrinking

The 568.01 lakh in the table above is a level, and the level is falling. Between the 2012 and 2019 censuses only cattle and buffalo grew. Everything else declined, and the smaller species collapsed.

GovtSource: Animal Husbandry Department, Government of Rajasthan, 20th Livestock Census Rajasthan 2019, "Provisional Data as received from GoI", file dated 31 March 2022. Two official figures differ here and both are printed. The state's file gives the total change as −1.61% and cattle as +4.60%; the Government of India's 20th Livestock Census Key Results gives the same state's total change as −1.66% and cattle as +4.41%, computed on its own final figures. The gap is in rounding and in the vintage of the underlying numbers, not in the direction.

This table supplies the evidence for the camel argument the state's own scheme implies. Rajasthan lost a third of its camels in seven years, from 3.26 lakh to 2.13 lakh, and it holds 84% of what is left. India as a whole lost 37.05% of its camels over the same interval, so the decline is national and Rajasthan is simply where most of it happened.

The donkey and mule rows are not trivia. A 71% fall in donkeys and a 60% fall in mules in seven years is the disappearance of an entire transport economy, and it is the kind of fact a Mains answer on pastoral livelihoods can use.

Which district holds what

RPSC asks the population form more often than the breed form. The state's own district table covers five species and is on the 33-district framework of 2019.

GovtSource: Animal Husbandry Department, Government of Rajasthan, 20th Livestock Census Rajasthan 2019. The file carries only these five species. It has no district column for camel, donkey, horse or mule, so no district claim for those species is made on this page.

Read the districts against today's map. These are the 33 districts of 2019. Rajasthan now has 41 districts and 425 tehsils after the reorganisation settled in December 2024, and several entries above have since been split: Barmer's count covers today's Barmer and Balotra, Jodhpur's covers Jodhpur and Phalodi, Alwar's covers Alwar, Khairthal-Tijara and Kotputli-Behror, Bharatpur's covers Bharatpur and Deeg, Jalore's covers Jalore and Sanchore, Udaipur's covers Udaipur and Salumbar, Nagaur's covers Nagaur and Didwana-Kuchaman, and Ajmer's covers Ajmer and Beawar. RPSC may key either the old district or the new one, so learn the answer as a place, not only as a name.

Barmer is the spine of this table. It is first in sheep, first in goats and third in cattle, which is what 28,000 square kilometres of arid grazing produces. Jaipur and Alwar are the buffalo districts, because buffalo need water and fodder the desert does not have, and Jaisalmer holds only 4,638 buffaloes for the same reason while standing second in sheep.

One derived measure is worth carrying, with its arithmetic shown. 568.01 lakh animals across the state's 3,42,239 square kilometres works out to about 166 animals per square kilometre, and against the 2011 Census population of 6.85 crore, about 828 animals per thousand people. Neither figure is published as such by the state. Both are division, and are labelled here as division.

2. Cattle: the five the textbooks teach, the eight on the register

RPSC maps breeds to districts. The breed alone is never the question.

TextbookSource: Rajasthan Board of Secondary Education, Rajasthan Adhyayan, Class 10, chapter 6 (Pashudhan evam Dairy Vikas), read directly from the volume. A printed textbook has no stable link, so it is cited in full rather than linked. The breed-to-district mapping is taken from it; none of its figures are, because the chapter's livestock counts date from 2003.

Three distinctions decide questions here.

Tharparkar and Rathi are the milk breeds; Nagauri is the draught breed; Kankrej is both. "Dual-purpose" is Kankrej's label and it is the one RPSC can hang a question on.

Tharparkar is Barmer and Rathi is Bikaner. Both are western, both are milk breeds, and they are the pair most easily swapped. Fix Tharparkar by its second name — Malani — because Malani is in Barmer.

Gir is the outsider. It is a Gujarat breed, and in Rajasthan it sits in the south-east, not the west. An option placing Gir in the desert is wrong on both counts.

The registered list is eight, not five

India keeps a statutory breed register, and it settles arguments the textbooks cannot. ICAR-NBAGR registers eight cattle breeds to Rajasthan: the five above minus Gir, plus Nari, Sanchori, Mewati and Sahiwal. Gir is registered to Gujarat, not to Rajasthan, which is the register agreeing with the point already made about it.

GovtSource: ICAR-National Bureau of Animal Genetic Resources, Karnal, Animal Genetic Resources of India database, state listing for Rajasthan, reached from the Bureau's AnGR database page. NBAGR is the national nodal institute for breed registration, so this is the register itself rather than a description of it.

Three corrections follow from the same register, and each is an examinable detail.

Rathi's parentage is not what the notes say. The register derives Rathi from a mixture of Sahiwal, Red Sindhi, Tharparkar and Dhanni, with a preponderance of Sahiwal, and takes its name from the Raths, a pastoral community. Notes that give the cross as Red Sindhi, Sahiwal and Haryanvi are adding a breed the register does not. The register also fixes its centre precisely: Rathi animals are concentrated in Loonkaransar tehsil of Bikaner, which is known as the Rathi tract.

Nagauri's registered spelling is Nagori, and its tract runs wider than Nagaur. Home tract Nagaur, with animals also in Jodhpur and in Nokha tehsil of Bikaner.

Kankrej and Tharparkar are registered as border breeds shared with Gujarat. Kankrej's registered tract is Jodhpur and Barmer in Rajasthan together with six Gujarat districts including Kutch; Tharparkar's is Jodhpur, Jaisalmer and Barmer with Kutch. The Class 10 mapping that places Kankrej in Sirohi and Jalore describes where the animal is kept; the registered tract is the narrower, official answer.

3. Sheep: eight taught, nine registered, and where the wool comes from

This is the densest recall block in the chapter, and the most rewarding, because the wool share makes it examinable.

TextbookSource: Rajasthan Board of Secondary Education, Rajasthan Adhyayan, Class 10, chapter 6, read directly. The textbook states that about 25% of India's sheep are in Rajasthan; the Government of Rajasthan's own Economic Review 2025-26 gives 10.64%. This page carries the state's current figure and shows the textbook's only as superseded.

Four of these are separable on a single detail, and those four are the answerable ones.

Chokla is "India's Merino" — the finest wool. Marwari is the most numerous — about 45%. Pugal is named after a tehsil of Bikaner. Sonadi's ears touch the ground.

Learn those four first. Magra and Nali are both northern and both wool breeds, and they are the pair most easily confused — Magra runs west (Jaisalmer, Bikaner) and Nali runs north-east (Hanumangarh, Jhunjhunu).

Note which breeds the state chose for improvement. The Sheep Breeding Programme applied cross-breeding to Nali, Chokla, Sonadi and Malpura. A programme that selects four out of eight is telling you which four the state considers improvable, and Chokla's presence on that list is consistent with it being the fine-wool breed.

The registered list is nine, and the ninth is Kheri

The national register carries one Rajasthan sheep breed the eight-breed tables do not: Kheri. It is asked by name, and a candidate working from an eight-breed list will not recognise it.

GovtSource: ICAR-NBAGR, Animal Genetic Resources of India database, via the Bureau's AnGR database page.

The register also settles the names. Malpura is the registered form and Malpuri is its synonym, not the other way round, and the breed is named after Malpura tehsil of Tonk, the same tehsil that contains Avikanagar. Chokla's registered synonyms are Chapper, Shekhawati and Raata Munda. Magra's are Magreti, Bikaneri Chokhla, Chakri, Boochie kan and Desi. Sonadi's are Desi, Laapdi and Bhagli, and the register explains the ear story that the notes reduce to a slogan: Sonadi means "one with golden fibres" and laapdi means long and flat eared. Nali is named after the Nali tract in Sri Ganganagar and Hanumangarh, where the surplus water of the Ghaggar spreads during the monsoon, which is a better mnemonic than a district list.

Fleece, measured rather than asserted:

GovtSource: ICAR-NBAGR, Animal Genetic Resources of India database, performance record for each breed, via the AnGR database page. These are register averages and ranges, not a single year's clip, and they are finer grained than the round figures textbooks print.

The numbers put the "India's Merino" nickname in its place without demolishing it. Chokla's recorded average fibre diameter of 23.4 microns is the finest single average of any Rajasthan breed in the register, and the register's own descriptor calls its fleece "fine carpet quality" rather than apparel quality. So Chokla is the fine-wool breed of the state, and it is a carpet-wool breed even so. Sonadi and Kheri, above 49 microns, are at the other end, and Malpura at 43 microns is described by the register as "an excellent mutton breed". That is why the wool argument in section 1 is about breed composition rather than skill.

One conflict inside the register, stated plainly. NBAGR's district list for Magra reads Udaipur, Dungarpur, Chittorgarh and Banswara, which is identical to Sonadi's and places a north-western breed in the south. The same record's own coordinates, 73.10 to 73.30 degrees east and 27.50 to 28.10 north, are the Bikaner belt, its synonym is Bikaneri Chokhla, and RAJUVAS runs its Livestock Research Station at Kodamdesar, Bikaner on "Bikaneri Chokla (Magra) sheep". The north-western mapping in the table above stands. The register's district field for this one breed looks like a duplication.

Goat breeds: seven registered, and two more added in August 2026

Rajasthan is first in India in goats, and the register carries seven goat breeds for the state, with two more added in 2026.

GovtSource: ICAR-NBAGR, Animal Genetic Resources of India database, breeding-tract and performance records, via the AnGR database page. Breed populations in that database come from the 2013 Breed Survey, except Sojat, which carries a 20th Livestock Census figure of about 1.05 lakh.

Two things here contradict what is usually taught, and both are worth carrying.

Jakhrana is not the highest-yielding goat of Rajasthan on the register's own numbers. It is the highest of the long-registered breeds, at 152.87 kg a lactation, and that is where the claim comes from. Gujari at 347.54 kg, Karauli at 270.0 kg and Sojat at 266.64 kg are all recorded higher, and all three were registered later. If a question asks for the highest-yielding goat breed of the state, name Jakhrana and say on what basis, because the register itself has moved.

Parbatsari is not a separate breed. The register lists it as a synonym of Sirohi, alongside Majithi and Devgarhi. Notes describing Parbatsari as a Beetal and Sirohi cross are describing a cross, not a registered breed.

Behror deserves a second look for the district discipline. Jakhrana's village lies in Behror, which since the reorganisation sits in Kotputli-Behror district, not in Alwar. The register still prints Alwar. Both answers have a defensible basis, so learn the village.

Two more Rajasthan goat breeds were registered on 7 August 2026. ICAR's Breed Registration Committee, at its 14th meeting, registered Totapuri goat from Rajasthan and Battisi goat from Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh, among sixteen new breeds. India's registered livestock and poultry breeds now total 262, of which 258 are indigenous and 4 synthetic.

GovtSource: Indian Council of Agricultural Research, ICAR registers 16 new livestock and dog breeds, meeting of 7 August 2026. The breeding tracts of these two breeds are not yet on the public register pages, so no district is claimed for them here.

Camel breeds: five, and the famous ones are not on the list

Five camel breeds are registered to Rajasthan. The state animal has fewer registered breeds than the state's goats do, and several names that circulate widely are not registered at all.

GovtSource: ICAR-NBAGR, Animal Genetic Resources of India database, camel entries for Rajasthan, via the AnGR database page.

Fix the pairs by use, because that is how the question is set. Bikaneri is the draught camel of the north, Jaisalmeri the riding and racing camel of the west, Marwari the load carrier, and Mewari the milk camel of the Aravallis. The riding and security-forces attribute belongs to Jaisalmeri in the register, whichever breed a coaching list attaches it to.

Buffalo: a tenth of India's buffaloes and no buffalo breed of its own

Rajasthan holds 12.47% of India's buffaloes, 1.37 crore animals, and the national register lists not one buffalo breed for the state. That is not an oversight to be corrected. It is the answer.

The buffaloes kept in Rajasthan belong to breeds registered elsewhere. Murrah's registered tract is Delhi and Haryana, in Rohtak, Hisar, Jind and Gurgaon. Bhadawari's is Morena and Bhind in Madhya Pradesh with Agra and Etawah in Uttar Pradesh. Surti, Mehsana and Jaffarabadi are Gujarat breeds. So a question asking for a buffalo breed of Rajasthan is either loosely framed or is asking which outside breeds are reared here, and Murrah is the one to name.

GovtSource: ICAR-NBAGR, Animal Genetic Resources of India database: the Rajasthan state listing returns no buffalo breed, and the Murrah and Bhadawari records give the tracts above. Reached from the AnGR database page.

4. What the herd produces

GovtSource: Government of Rajasthan, Economic Review 2025-26, Table 1.10, "Livestock Production". 2023-24 is the latest complete year in the state's own accounts; there is no full-year 2025-26 figure to quote.

Milk is the growth story and wool is not. Milk rose from 26,572 to 34,733 thousand tonnes across five years, about 31%. Wool rose from 144 to 160 lakh kg, about 11%, and it fell between 2022-23 and 2023-24. Eggs dipped in 2020-21 and recovered past the starting point.

That divergence is worth an answer. The state that produces nearly half of India's wool has a wool output that is essentially flat, while its milk output grows steadily. The cooperative structure in section 6 exists for milk and has no equivalent for wool, which is the most defensible explanation available from these figures alone.

What livestock is worth to the state

The most useful number on this page for a Mains answer is not a head count. Livestock now contributes more to Rajasthan's economy than crops do.

GovtSource: Government of Rajasthan, Economic Review 2025-26, Figure 1.3 and the sectoral GSVA tables. These are 2025-26 advance estimates, not audited results. The growth rates are at constant prices; the shares are at current prices.

Say it in one sentence and the answer is made. In a year when Rajasthan's crop output contracted by 5%, its livestock output grew by 5.2%, and livestock passed crops in both the agricultural and the state accounts. Milk carries almost the whole of it, which is why the dairy structure in section 6 matters more to the state economy than its share of the syllabus suggests.

5. Veterinary infrastructure

RPSC has not built a question on this table yet, but the trend in it is the kind of thing a Mains answer needs.

GovtSource: Government of Rajasthan, Economic Review 2025-26, Table 1.9. The 2025-26 column runs only to December and is a nine-month position, not a full year. The district mobile veterinary unit figure falls from 102 to 34; the Review does not explain the drop, and it is reproduced as printed rather than smoothed.

Polyclinics nearly tripled in four years, from 35 to 98. Sub-centres grew by about a third. The expansion is real and it is at the two ends — the most specialised facilities and the most local ones.

Do not read the mobile-unit row as a collapse without checking. It may reflect a transfer to the 1962 mobile service described below rather than a withdrawal of vehicles, but the Review does not say so, and this page will not assert a reason it cannot source.

Animal health, in one year

GovtSource: Government of Rajasthan, Economic Review 2025-26. All figures are for 2025-26 up to December and are therefore part-year.

Gopalan: the gaushala arm

A separate directorate runs cattle shelter and native-breed conservation, and it spends more than any other line in this chapter. The framework is the Cattle Conservation and Preservation Nidhi of 2016 and 2021.

GovtSource: Government of Rajasthan, Economic Review 2025-26, "Gopalan" and "Animal Welfare Initiatives". All positions are up to December 2025 and are therefore part-year.

The ₹1,204.90 crore is the figure to remember, because it dwarfs the camel mission's ₹17 crore in section 8 and shows where the animal-welfare budget actually goes. The 90:10 ratio recurs across three of these schemes and is a plausible one-mark question on its own.

6. Dairy: the cooperative structure

The whole of Rajasthan's dairy development runs through cooperatives, on the Amul model, and the three-tier structure is the examinable part.

GovtSource: Government of Rajasthan, Economic Review 2025-26, "Dairy Development", as at December 2025. The Class 10 textbook gives 16 district unions and 8,874 societies from 2006-07; those figures are superseded and are not carried here.

The three-tier cooperative structure is Verghese Kurien's Anand pattern, and RCDF is Rajasthan's apex body under it. A question naming the state-level dairy federation is answered by RCDF, Jaipur.

GovtSource: Government of Rajasthan, Economic Review 2025-26, Table 1.11 and the surrounding text. All figures are nine-month positions to December 2025 against annual targets, so procurement running below target is a part-year reading, not a shortfall.

Note the gap between capacity and procurement. The unions can process 51.40 lakh litres a day and are procuring 30.29 lakh kg a day. Installed capacity is running well ahead of collection, which is the more interesting observation than either figure alone.

RCDF's product range is worth a line because it shows how far the federation has moved past liquid milk: ghee, chhach, lassi, shrikhand, paneer, curd, tetra-pack milk, mawa, ice cream, flavoured milk, barfi and peda.

When the federation was set up

RCDF was set up in 1977 as the implementing agency for dairy development programmes in Rajasthan, registered as a society under the Rajasthan Cooperative Societies Act, 1965.

PrimarySource: National Dairy Development Board, Dairy Knowledge Portal entry for RCDF. NDDB is the statutory body for dairy development and is primary for the cooperative structure, though it is not the Rajasthan government. The predecessor bodies that coaching notes name, a Dairy Department of 1973 and a State Dairy Development Corporation of 1975, could not be traced to any government document and are not asserted here.

The rest of the dairy table

Section 6 carries the procurement and marketing rows of Table 1.11. The remaining four rows show what the federation is actually building.

GovtSource: Government of Rajasthan, Economic Review 2025-26, Table 1.11. Nine-month positions against annual targets. RCDF also supplied 10,223 quintals of improved fodder crop seed to the district unions in 2025-26.

New society formation is running at 43% of target and revival at 81%. It is easier to restart a society that has lapsed than to create one where none existed, and that asymmetry is the most defensible reading of those two rows.

What a milk producer gets besides the milk price

GovtSource: Government of Rajasthan, Economic Review 2025-26, "Livestock Farmer's Welfare Initiatives".

Credit is the fourth leg, and it sits in the cooperation chapter of the Review rather than the livestock one. The Rajasthan Cooperative Gopal Credit Card Loan Scheme gives interest-free short-term loans of up to ₹1 lakh, aimed at 2.5 lakh dairy farmer families, against a budget provision of ₹150 crore. Of 92,074 online applications received, 89,997 have been approved. Insurance, a price top-up and interest-free credit are three separate instruments aimed at the same household, and naming all three is what separates a full answer from a list.

7. Research institutes RPSC has used

These are pure recall, they recur, and they are cheap marks.

TextbookGovtSources: the National Research Centre on Camel at Bikaner and the National Research Centre on Seed Spices at Ajmer are RPSC's own keyed answers (2023 Prelims Q75 and 2018 Prelims Q99). The remaining institutions are from Rajasthan Board of Secondary Education, Rajasthan Adhyayan, Class 10, chapter 6, read directly. Avikanagar appears as a distractor in RPSC's camel question and is the home of the Central Sheep and Wool Research Institute, which is why it is a plausible-looking wrong answer there.

The camel-to-Bikaner and sheep-to-Avikanagar pair is the one to fix. RPSC set Avikanagar as a distractor against Bikaner in 2023, precisely because both are genuine livestock research locations. Bikaner is camel; Avikanagar is sheep and wool.

The institutional map, checked against the institutions

Two rows of the table above come from a Class 10 textbook and do not survive a check against the bodies themselves. Both corrections are exam-relevant.

Suratgarh is a cattle farm, not a sheep centre. The Department of Animal Husbandry and Dairying lists a Central Cattle Breeding Farm at Suratgarh, Sri Ganganagar, among its subordinate offices, one of seven such farms in the country. The sheep research station in the state's north is at Bikaner, and it is ICAR-CSWRI's Arid Region Campus, whose 46th foundation day ICAR recorded on 4 April 2019. Bikaner is sheep and camel. Suratgarh is cattle breeding.

The wool body at Jodhpur is the Central Wool Development Board. It was constituted in July 1987 with its headquarters at Jodhpur, under the Ministry of Textiles, and became functional in 1989. That, and not a training school, is what a question about a wool institution at Jodhpur is after. A Sheep and Wool Training Institute at Jaipur is claimed in coaching material and could not be confirmed from any government source.

The bodies that belong on a livestock page and are not on the table above:

GovtSources: RAJUVAS for its own founding Act and date; Central Wool Development Board for its constitution and headquarters; Department of Animal Husbandry and Dairying, list of attached and subordinate offices, which carries the entry "Central Cattle Breeding Farm, Suratgarh (Rajasthan)"; ICAR, Arid Region Campus foundation day.

RAJUVAS runs the state's livestock research stations, and the breed each one works on is the useful part.

GovtSource: RAJUVAS, Livestock Research Stations. The university's own station list contains no buffalo research centre, which is consistent with the state having no registered buffalo breed of its own.

Note where each station sits relative to its breed. Chandan is in Jaisalmer and works on Tharparkar; Nohar is in Hanumangarh and works on Rathi; Kodamdesar is in Bikaner and works on Magra. Every one of them is inside the breeding tract the register gives, which makes the pair easy to hold and hard to get wrong.

8. Nowadays — what changed in 2026

Covering 1 January to 23 August 2026, with the schemes running through it. Updated every month until Prelims and Mains.

Free livestock insurance began on 1 December 2025

Mukhyamantri Mangala Pashu Bima Yojana is the state's flagship livestock scheme and the most likely new question on this page.

GovtSource: Government of Rajasthan, Economic Review 2025-26. The 42 lakh figure is a target for the year, not an achievement — do not write it as animals insured.

The scheme's design is the examinable part: the premium is entirely public, and the eligible list is restricted to indigenous species. A scheme that insures only indigenous breeds is a breed-conservation instrument wearing an insurance jacket, and that is the point to make in an answer.

The design details are where a scheme question actually lands.

GovtSource: Government of Rajasthan, Mukhyamantri Mangla Pashu Bima Yojana portal. The scheme is administered by the State Insurance and Provident Fund Department, which hosts the scheme documents.

The sum insured is not one number, and that is the trap. ₹40,000 covers a cow, a buffalo or a camel; a sheep or a goat is covered for ₹4,000, ten of them to one beneficiary. An option that puts ₹40,000 against a goat is wrong by a factor of ten.

Camel conservation

GovtSource: Economic Review 2025-26. Figures are cumulative "so far", not annual.

Set this against the 84.43% share in section 1. Rajasthan holds five-sixths of India's camels and pays a bounty on newborn calves to keep them. A state paying people to breed an animal it already dominates is telling you the population is falling, and that is the argument a Mains answer on the camel should make.

The 1962 mobile veterinary service

Veterinary care at the livestock owner's door, run on the model of the 108 medical emergency service.

GovtSource: Economic Review 2025-26, Figure 1.10.

The state also announced, for 2025-26: 700 new veterinary sub-centres, 151 sub-centres upgraded to hospitals, 101 hospitals upgraded to first-grade, 50 first-grade hospitals upgraded to polyclinics, 2,423 new posts, and ₹144.15 crore approved by NABARD under RIDF Tranche-31 for 310 veterinary hospitals.

The 1962 service is a centrally sponsored component, and the sharing pattern is asked. Under Establishment and Strengthening of Veterinary Hospitals and Dispensaries: Mobile Veterinary Units, a component of the Livestock Health and Disease Control Programme, the Centre bears 100% of the cost of procuring and customising the vehicles, and 60% of the recurring cost of running them for a general-category state such as Rajasthan, with 90% for the North Eastern and Himalayan states and 100% for Union Territories. So the familiar 60:40 applies to running the units, not to buying them.

GovtSource: Department of Animal Husbandry and Dairying, reply to Rajya Sabha Unstarred Question 2817.

Camps

24 June to 9 July 2025 — the Pandit Deendayal Upadhyay Antyodaya Sambal Fortnight treated 25.19 lakh sick animals and vaccinated 23.21 lakh, benefiting 6.63 lakh livestock owners. Under the Rural Service Camp Campaign 2025, more than 21 lakh animals were treated and 17.41 lakh vaccinated.

Avishaan was notified in the Gazette on 10 February 2026

India's first synthetic sheep breed is a Rajasthan breed, and it became a notified breed this year.

By notification S.O. 723(E) of 10 February 2026, the Department of Agricultural Research and Education notified Avishaan, a synthetic sheep of Rajasthan, as a notified breed for the whole of India, with accession number INDIA_SHEEPSYNTHETIC_1700_AVISHAAN_15001. That single notification carries three breeds and only three — Karan Fries synthetic cattle of Haryana, Vrindavani synthetic cattle of Uttar Pradesh, and Avishaan synthetic sheep of Rajasthan. Avishaan is the only synthetic sheep on the national register, which holds four synthetic breeds in all against 258 indigenous ones.

GovtSources: Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers' Welfare, Department of Agricultural Research and Education, Notification S.O. 723(E), New Delhi, 10 February 2026, published in the Gazette of India, Extraordinary, Part II—Section 3—Sub-section (ii), No. 685, 12 February 2026 (F. No. D-04/9/2024-IC-I, signed by Dr M. L. Jat, Secretary, DARE and Director General, ICAR), downloaded and read in full. The notification's own words are that the breeds "shall be the notified breeds for the whole of India" from the date of its publication. ICAR, release of the prolific breed cross Avishaan, 4 January 2016, for the composition and the release; and ICAR, ICAR-NBAGR registers 16 new livestock and poultry breeds, 12 November 2025, for the registration that preceded the notification.

Three dates, and they are three different things. Avishaan was released by ICAR-CSWRI on 4 January 2016, registered by ICAR-NBAGR in the batch announced on 12 November 2025, and notified in the Gazette on 10 February 2026. A release is a research announcement, a registration is an entry in the national breed register, and a notification is law. Preparation material collapses the three into one year and picks whichever it met first, so read which of the three a question is actually asking for.

The same day's other notification is a trap set for Rajasthan candidates. S.O. 722(E), signed on 10 February 2026 alongside the Avishaan notification, notified thirteen indigenous breeds and not one of them is Rajasthan's. One of the thirteen is the Udaipuri goat — and it belongs to Uttarakhand, not to Udaipur. Rajasthan's entry in that day's Gazette is Avishaan and Avishaan alone.

Set Avishaan against section 3 and the chapter closes on itself. A Malpura ewe from Tonk crossed with a Garole from Bengal, bred at a station in Malpura tehsil, becomes the country's first synthetic sheep breed. The state that produces nearly half of India's wool got its newest registered breed for meat and prolificacy, not for fleece.

Two Rajasthan goat breeds registered on 7 August 2026

ICAR's Breed Registration Committee registered sixteen new indigenous breeds at its 14th meeting on 7 August 2026, and two of them are Rajasthan goats: Totapuri, from Rajasthan, and Battisi, from Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh. India's registered total is now 262 breeds, 258 indigenous and 4 synthetic.

GovtSource: ICAR, ICAR registers 16 new livestock and dog breeds, 7 August 2026, read directly. The sixteen cover nine species across thirteen states and one Union Territory, and the two Rajasthan entries are both goats. Do not attach the other fourteen to this state: the Umarda cattle of that batch is Maharashtra's, not a Rajasthan breed, whatever the name suggests. This is a registration by ICAR's Breed Registration Committee. Whether these two have since been notified in the Gazette, as Avishaan was, is not established here.

What the Budget for 2026-27 promised, and what it did not

These are announcements made in the Budget of February 2026 and in the replies of 17 and 27 February 2026. None of them is an achievement yet, and that distinction is the examinable part.

GovtSources: Government of Rajasthan, Budget Speech 2026-27, paragraphs 188 to 194; announcements in the Budget debate reply, 17 February 2026; announcements in the Appropriation Bill reply, 27 February 2026. Every row is an announcement of intent. None is a completed work, and none should be written as one.

Note the two-tier veterinary norm, because it is the kind of administrative detail RPSC likes. A gram panchayat qualifies for a new sub-centre at 3,000 livestock. Upgrading a sub-centre to a hospital gives priority to 5,000 livestock within 6 km in rural areas and 3,000 within 4 km in urban areas.

Note the poultry geography too. The backyard poultry clusters go to the southern tribal belt and the feed unit to Ajmer, the same district that already holds the National Research Centre on Seed Spices at Tabiji.

And note what the Budget did not contain. There was no new announcement for camel or for wool in the 2026-27 Budget, in a state that holds 84% of India's camels and produces nearly half its wool.

2026 is the International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists

The United Nations General Assembly declared 2026 the International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists, on a resolution led by Mongolia and adopted in 2022, with FAO asked to facilitate it. The Government of Rajasthan cited the designation in the Assembly on 27 February 2026 when announcing the Gau Seva Niti.

PrimarySource: FAO, UN names 2026 as the International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists; the state's reference is in the Appropriation Bill reply of 27 February 2026.

Do not confuse it with the camel year. 2024 was the International Year of Camelids, not of the camel, and 2026 is about rangelands and pastoralists. A state with 5.68 crore animals grazing largely on common land has an obvious stake in the second one.

What has not changed

The livestock population figures are still Livestock Census 2019, and that is correct. The 21st Livestock Census was launched on 25 October 2024 with enumeration to run to 31 March 2025, but the Government of Rajasthan's own Economic Review 2025-26 still cites the 2019 census, and no 21st-census population for Rajasthan has been located as published. So 568.01 lakh remains the figure to quote, with the year attached.

Watch this one. When the 21st Livestock Census results are published, every share in section 1 changes at once — the camel figure most of all. That is the single most likely thing on this page to go stale before the exam.

There is now a dated position on where the 21st census has reached. The Department of Animal Husbandry and Dairying's Annual Report 2025-26, published in April 2026, records that data collection has concluded and that tabulation and report writing are under way, with a Post-Enumeration Survey planned to test the quality, coverage and accuracy of what was collected. So the delay is a processing stage, not a suspension, and no state-level figure exists to quote until the tabulation is released. 568.01 lakh, dated 2019, remains the answer.

GovtSource: Department of Animal Husbandry and Dairying, Annual Report 2025-26, "The 21st Livestock Census is Now Underway". The report also records that the 21st census captured, for the first time, the livestock holdings of pastoral communities and the role of women in animal management.

What RPSC has actually asked

The rest of the livestock and agriculture questions are worked in full on the Geography of Rajasthan PYQ page, under Agriculture, horticulture and livestock.

Revision notes

Aggregator Watch

Everything below circulates widely in coaching material for this chapter and is asserted nowhere on this page. It is recorded so that a reader who meets it elsewhere knows where it stands.

BLOCK: SOURCES

Practice

• Practice: Livestock and Dairy — 45 questions built from this chapter: 36 MCQs, 5 assertion-reason and 4 match-the-following, plus flashcards and rapid one-liners.
• Every RAS Prelims Geography question, 2013–2024 — all 78 official questions with RPSC's keys and worked explanations.

More in This Series

• Rajasthan: Location, Extent and Physiography
• Rajasthan's Climate: Characteristics, Regions and the Monsoon
• Soils of Rajasthan: Classification, Distribution and Soil Health
• Agriculture of Rajasthan: Crops, Zones and the State's Standing
• Tourism in Rajasthan: Sites, Visitors and the World Heritage Count
• Natural Vegetation, Biodiversity and Conservation
• Population, Urbanisation and Tribes
• Minerals and Energy Resources
• Geography of Rajasthan — every PYQ, solved

Sources & Verification

Written on 23 August 2026.

Source priority: Government of Rajasthan first for every figure, the state textbooks only for breed-to-district mapping. No coaching material or aggregator has been used on this page.

The documents themselves

All links were working on 23 August 2026.

Every number on this page is from the Economic Review 2025-26, read directly: the species-wise shares of India and the 568.01 lakh total (attributed there to Livestock Census 2019), the wool and milk production shares for 2023-24, Table 1.9 for veterinary institutions, Table 1.10 for livestock production, Table 1.11 and its surrounding text for dairy, and the scheme figures for camel conservation, Mangala Pashu Bima, the 1962 service and the vaccination campaigns.

Only the breed mapping comes from the textbook, and it is tagged as such wherever it appears. This split is deliberate. A breed's home district does not change; a livestock count changes every few years. The Class 10 chapter's own figures are 2003 for livestock numbers and 2006-07 for dairy, and none of them is carried onto this page as current.

Two textbook figures are shown only as superseded. The chapter states that about 25% of India's sheep are in Rajasthan — the state's own Economic Review gives 10.64%. It gives 16 district milk unions and 8,874 societies — the current figures are 24 and 19,643. Both corrections are stated on the face of the relevant table, not hidden here.

One figure is reproduced without explanation because the source gives none. District mobile veterinary units fall from 102 to 34 between 2024-25 and the December 2025 position in Table 1.9. The Review does not account for the drop. It may reflect absorption into the 1962 mobile service, but that is a guess and is not asserted on the page.

Part-year figures are labelled throughout. Anything marked "up to December" is a nine-month position in 2025-26 and is not a full-year result. Procurement running below target is a part-year reading, not a shortfall, and the page says so.

A gap this page declared open is now closed, and how it was closed matters. Goat and camel breeds were left off this page in its first version. The Class 10 chapter does not list them; the Government of Rajasthan's Animal Husbandry knowledge paper proved to be an investment-promotion document rather than a breed reference; and ICAR-NBAGR, which maintains India's official breed registry, was recorded here as not responding. Breed lists from search summaries were available at that point and were deliberately not used, and the gap was declared instead of filled. On the revision of 29 August 2026 the Bureau's own host was reachable and its Animal Genetic Resources database was queried directly, so the goat and camel breeds on this page now come from the national register rather than from any secondary list. The earlier refusal is the reason the section is trustworthy now: nothing was carried forward from the period when no source existed.

The staleness risk is named. When the 21st Livestock Census is published, every share in section 1 changes. The Economic Review 2025-26 still cites the 2019 census, so that remains the published basis; no 21st-census figure for Rajasthan was located as published on 23 August 2026.

What was added on 29 August 2026, and from where

1. Species-wise national ranks, and the states above Rajasthan in each: Department of Animal Husbandry and Dairying, 20th Livestock Census Key Results, file dated 16 October 2019, Tables 3, 8, 10, 12, 14, 18, 20 and 22. Ranks were read from the state tables, not inferred from the shares already on the page.

2. Milk and wool ranks for 2024-25, and the absence of a top-five place in eggs and meat: DAHD, Basic Animal Husbandry Statistics 2025, released December 2025. The year differs from the Economic Review's 2023-24 shares and both are printed with their years, because 47.85% and 47.53% are the same fact measured a year apart.

3. The 2012 to 2019 change table and the district table for five species: Animal Husbandry Department, Government of Rajasthan, 20th Livestock Census Rajasthan 2019, file dated 31 March 2022. Two official figures diverge and both are on the page: the state's file gives the total inter-census change as −1.61% and cattle as +4.60%; the Government of India's file gives −1.66% and +4.41%.

4. The 41-district caveat. The district table is on the 33-district framework of 2019. Rajasthan has 41 districts and 425 tehsils after the December 2024 reorganisation, and the entries that have since been split are named on the face of the table.

5. Livestock's weight in the state economy, ₹2.17 lakh crore of GVA, 49.35% of agriculture and allied GVA and 12.70% of GSVA: Economic Review 2025-26, Figure 1.3 and the sectoral GSVA tables. These are 2025-26 advance estimates.

6. Every breed added or corrected — three cattle breeds, Kheri among the sheep, seven goat breeds, five camel breeds, and the finding that Rajasthan has no registered buffalo breed — comes from ICAR-NBAGR's Animal Genetic Resources of India database, the national breed register, reached from the Bureau's AnGR database page. An earlier revision of this page recorded that ICAR-NBAGR was unreachable. It is reachable on this host, and the gap left open then is now closed from the register itself.

7. Two corrections are recorded rather than made silently. Parbatsari is a registered synonym of Sirohi, not a separate goat breed. Jakhrana, at 152.87 kg a lactation, is exceeded on the register's own performance records by Gujari, Karauli and Sojat, all registered later; the page says on what basis the familiar claim holds.

8. One conflict inside a source is reported as a conflict. NBAGR's district field for Magra duplicates Sonadi's and contradicts the same record's coordinates and its own synonym, Bikaneri Chokhla. The north-western mapping is kept, supported by RAJUVAS's Livestock Research Station at Kodamdesar, Bikaner, which works on "Bikaneri Chokla (Magra) sheep".

9. Two rows of the research-institute table are corrected. Suratgarh holds a Central Cattle Breeding Farm, a DAHD subordinate office (list of attached and subordinate offices), not a sheep centre; the sheep station in the north is ICAR-CSWRI's Arid Region Campus at Bikaner (ICAR). The wool institution at Jodhpur is the Central Wool Development Board, constituted in July 1987 under the Ministry of Textiles (CWDB).

10. RAJUVAS, created 18 May 2010 under the RAJUVAS Act, 2010, with its veterinary college at Bikaner dating from 1954, and its livestock research stations: RAJUVAS and its Livestock Research Stations page.

11. Gopalan and the gaushala schemes, the remaining rows of Table 1.11, the milk-producer welfare schemes and the Rajasthan Cooperative Gopal Credit Card Loan Scheme: Economic Review 2025-26. All positions are to December 2025 and are part-year.

12. RCDF's founding year, 1977, and its registration under the Rajasthan Cooperative Societies Act, 1965: NDDB Dairy Knowledge Portal. The 1973 and 1975 predecessor bodies that coaching notes give were not traced to any government document and are not on the page.

13. The sums insured under Mangla Pashu Bima, including the ₹4,000 ceiling for a sheep or goat against ₹40,000 for a cow, buffalo or camel: Government of Rajasthan, scheme portal. The SC and ST reservation percentages that circulate are not on the state's own portal and are not asserted.

14. The 1962 service's funding pattern: DAHD, reply to Rajya Sabha Unstarred Question 2817. 100% central assistance for procuring the units, 60% of the recurring cost for a general-category state. The familiar 60:40 applies to running them, not to buying them.

15. Avishaan's notification: Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers' Welfare, Gazette notification S.O. 723(E) of 10 February 2026, published 12 February 2026. Composition and release date from ICAR; breeding tract and performance from the AnGR database.

16. The two goat breeds registered on 7 August 2026 and India's total of 262 registered breeds: ICAR. Their breeding tracts are not yet on the public register, so no district is given for either.

17. Everything in the 2026-27 Budget block is an announcement and is labelled as one: Budget Speech 2026-27, paragraphs 188 to 194; Budget debate reply, 17 February 2026; Appropriation Bill reply, 27 February 2026. The Gau Seva Niti, 2026 was announced on 27 February 2026 and no notified policy has been located, so it appears as an announcement and nothing more.

18. 2026 as the International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists: FAO. 2024 was the International Year of Camelids, and the two are frequently merged in coaching material into an "International Year of the Camel" that does not exist.

19. The 21st Livestock Census position: DAHD, Annual Report 2025-26, published April 2026, which records that data collection has concluded, that tabulation and report writing are under way, and that a Post-Enumeration Survey is planned. No 21st-census population for Rajasthan has been published, so the 2019 figures stand.

All links above were checked and returned HTTP 200 on 29 August 2026.