Tackling the future challenges of Organic Animal Husbandry - vTI

! Agriculture and Forestry Research, Special Issue No 362 (Braunschweig, 2012) ISSN 0376-0723
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que throughout the world (Banerjee, 1980). Although reared by resource poor farmers to provide
food security and sustain livelihoods, small ruminants are not adequately paid attention under National
Livestock Development Policy of Bangladesh. Several researches have conducted research
on genetic parameters and reproductive performances of goat, but there is an acute shortage of information
regarding the present status of goat rearer and rearing pattern of goat in rural areas in
Khulna district. For this the study was conducted with the following objectives:
1. To analyze the socio-economic characteristics of the goat farmers.
2. To know the present status of goat rearing in some selected areas of south-west regions of
Bangladesh.
3. To identify the problems related to goat rearing and recommendations to overcome the problems.
Methodology
The study was conducted at randomly selected three Upazilas from Khulna district namely Batiaghata,
Dumuria and Rupsha Upazila. These Upazilas are situated under the same Agro-Ecological
Zone (AEZ) of the Ganges Tidal Flood Plain (Anonymous, 1988). An interview schedule was used
as the research instrument in order to collect relevant information from the respondents. Data for
this study were collected by the researchers through door to door interview during the period from
April to June 2011. The personal and socio-economic variables of the respondents were included in
the present study. The variables were age of the farmers, their education, family size, occupation,
farm size, experience in farming, annual income, farming system, organizational participation, cosmopoliteness,
training exposure and extension media contact. Data were also collected on housing
pattern for goat, income from goat rearing, number of goats per family, age at puberty of goats, age
at first kidding, litter size, kidding interval, milk yield, information about availability of buck,
common diseases of goats, feeding management of goats and preventive measure against diseases,
problems confronted by farmers to determine the present status of goat rearing. Data were compiled,
tabulated and analyzed based on the objectives. Different statistical treatments such as number,
mean, standard deviation, range, minimum, maximum and percentage were used to describe the
variables. The SPSS 11.5 computer package program was used to analyze the data.
Results and Discussion
Personal and socio-economic characteristics of the respondents
Majority (50.7%) of the respondents were middle aged as compared to 31.3% being young aged and
18% old aged. It means that middle aged people were more interested in goat rearing. Majority
(54.0%) of the respondents had secondary level of education followed by primary (32.0%), higher
secondary (3.3%) and only a few had above higher secondary (0.7%) levels where 10.0% respondents
had no institutional education. Majority (60.7%) of the respondents had small compared to
marginal (32.7%) and medium (6.6%) sized farm. Occupation of majority of the respondents
(61.3%) was agriculture followed by day labourer (18.7%), businessman (13.3%) and the lowest
number of respondents (6.7%) was engaged in service. Majority (64.0%) of the respondents belonged
to low income group as compared to medium (26.7%) and high (9.3%) income group.
Majority (83.3%) of the respondents had no organizational participation as compared to medium
(8.0%), low (5.3%) and high (3.4%) organizational participation. Highest proportion (54.7%) of
the respondents had medium cosmopoliteness as compared to low cosmopoliteness (31.3%) and
high cosmopoliteness (14.0%). Cosmopoliteness enhances the opportunity for an individual to have
himself to contact with outside information sources. Highest portion of the respondents (68.7%) had
medium experience followed by short experienced (22.0%) and had long experienced (9.3%) in
farming. Few of the respondents (42.0%) belonged to medium experienced in goat rearing followed
by low experienced (30.7 %) while about 27.3% were highly experienced in goat rearing. Majority
(79.3%) of the respondents had no training on goat rearing. However, 16.7% of the respondents had
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