Author(s): S. K. Swain, A. K. Mohapatra and A. K. Dash

Abstract: In Odisha, the small and marginal farmers in many districts still depend upon the animal energy for accomplishment of agricultural operations because of small and fragmented land holding as well as poor socio-economic status. Of late, the maintenance cost of a pair of bullocks proves to be a burden on these farmers with increase in labour cost. A study on use of animal energy for operating a feed-in type sunflower thresher with rotary gear system was made to increase the output against the conventional manual method using threshing bench and also to increase the annual use of the bullocks so as to reduce the owning cost of bullocks.The results on operation of thresher indicated that the average output of the thresher was 66.98 kg h-1 with mean threshing efficiency of 93.65 per cent. The mean draft was 484 N which was 7.9 per cent of the bodyweight of the bullocks indicating that the thresher can be comfortably operated by a pair of bullocks in rotary mode. The cost of operation of the thresher in rotary mode was found rather economical compared to threshing by manual method using threshing bench. The use of sunflower thresher in rotary mode will increase the annual utilization of animal and can save time in threshing, reduce drudgery in operation compared to traditional manual threshing bench method.

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