Stall feeding in small ruminants: emerging trends and future perspectives

Abstract

The small ruminant husbandry sector in India is not an organized sector like poultry, however, nowa-days many young entrepreneurs are setting up goat/sheep units using scientific rearing practices. Improving economic status, need for quality meat products, floating population of metropolis cities and changing family concept to go for animal protein are likely to increase the requirement of chevon/mutton in the future. The intensive feeding of small ruminants is a challenging job to the nutritionists and this sector is coming up very fast to meet the increasing demand of protein of animal origin in the Indian sub-continent. To increase the production potential of sheep/goats in terms of meat, milk, wool, skin, manure etc., it is necessary to incorporate proper feeding schedule under intensive or semi-intensive system of production to achieve optimum animal productivity and economic sustainability. Therefore, various issues pertaining to stall feeding of small ruminants, its scope and cost: benefit ratio while establishing a commercial sheep and goat farm with minimum investment have been dealt in this communication. Ensuring job security for the rural youth through this pro-poor livestock sector would pave the way for meeting demand of protein of animal origin and nourishment of the increasing human population while ensuring sustainable livelihood security.