This article aims to examine the use pattern and potentiality of livestock farming in the Uttarakhand Himalaya, India. We collected and compared data on livestock population and production in 13 districts of Uttarakhand (2001–14) and noted that number of milching livestock, improved hen and milk production increased during the period. Meanwhile, population of sheep, goat, lamb and indigenous hen has decreased. The study reveals that livestock farming, including cattle, milching animals, goat and sheep has high potential in livelihood sustainability.

In India sustaining dairy farming as a rural livelihood and to meet the growing demand of milk, necessitates development and dissemination of technology for improving the farm’s output. There is also a need to understand how far existing innovations are adopted by farmers and factors influencing adoption and/or rejection. Hence, the factors that influence adoption and the extent of adoption were consolidated from past research using meta analysis and other techniques.

The formation of new crossbred cattle breeds to increase milk production was started in India because of crossbred cattle were more economical and gave higher milk yield than the indigenous cows and increase the income of a farmers, dairy entrepreneurs and provide beneficial and round the year employment to them. Therefore, population of crossbred cows should be increased simultaneously with Artificial Insemination programme to increase profitability to the farmers and dairy industry.