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Buffaloes and cattle are the major dairy animals of the Indian subcontinent besides sources of agricultural power in many countries of South East and East Asia. The annual projected growth rate for milk production in Indian has been 4.82% in comparison of estimated growth rate of 2.58%. Thus, there has been a gap between projected and actual growth rate of milk production in India. This gap has been mainly due to poor productive and reproductive efficiency of dairy animals, scarcity of quality feed and fodders, tapering off fertile land for fodder production, and occurrence of nutritional, infectious and non-specific diseases.

Feeding standards are the basis of scientific feeding for feed efficient and profitable animal production system. A few standards are available for the feeding of buffaloes and cattle in tropical countries but they have been evolved on the basis of inadequate experimental findings. Therefore, a feeding standard, generated from the performance out put of animals reared on diversified locally available feed resources; suitable to varying agro-climatic condition have been generated.

In the present feeding standards, an attempt has been made for evolving feeding standards for various physiological functions based on that database. Feeding standards so developed matched well with most of the experimental results. Moreover, judicious feeding practice based on available feed resources for augmenting milk, power and meat production under tropical condition is needed. This monograph will be useful for buffalo and cattle breeders, students, research workers and animal husbandry programme managers.