Prevalent goat husbandry practices in Patiala district of Punjab

Abstract

This study was conducted to determine the prevalent goat husbandry practices in Patiala district of Punjab, India. For data collection, one block from three tehsils and two villages from each block were selected randomly. It was observed that the farmers in the region preferred to rear buffaloes and cows, and some landless, marginal and small farmers were rearing the goats. Very few families were found engaged in rearing of goats as a profession, and it was maintained as a group of 20 to 30 goats per flock. Daily 6-8 h grazing was routinely practiced by most of the farmers particularly on the side of roads, canals and fallow field. In addition, fodder sources were from top feeds like mulberry (Morus alba), peepal (Ficus religiosa), gular (Ficus glomerata [Ficus racemosa]), babool (Acacia nilotica), deg (Melia azadirachta [Azadirachta indica]) and ber (Ziziphus nummularia) trees. Goats were mostly maintained only on grazing without any extra feeding of hay or concentrate. However, a small number of goats maintained by farmers were fed little amount of concentrate. The average lactation length of the does was 177.83 days, and peak milk yield was observed to be 1.2, 1.1 and 1.3 kg in landless, marginal and small-landhold categories of farmers, respectively. The age at first kidding, inter-kidding period, service period and dry period in goats reared by the farmers were 18.5, 19.2 and 20.0 months, 302, 338 and 325 days, 152, 187 and 175 days and 128, 153 and 150 days, respectively for landless, marginal and small-landholding farmers. It was concluded that lower socioeconomic group kept/reared goats for their livelihood with minimum inputs. Goat keepers required training on scientific rearing and feeding of goats to enhance production performance for better sustainability. Goats should be supplemented with concentrate and dry fodder in adequate quantity to obtain better growth and production performance during forage scarcity periods.