Livestock Nutrition

Biography

Biography: Hina Ashraf Waiz

Abstract

This study is based on the premise that promotion poultry farming can help the state to bridge the gap between demand and supply of eggs and poultry meat as well as generate self employment to reduce poverty and empower rural women. Since time immemorial backyard poultry farming has played an important role to meet the domestic as well as socio-cultural needs of the rural people. However, the traditional poultry farming in villages has suffered in the wake of commercialization in the recent years. Thus, the present study had been conceptualized with the overall objective to search out the existing status of backyard poultry farming and identify the constraints perceived by poultry owners in Ganderbal district of Kashmir, India. The study was conducted in randomly selected fifteen villages of three sub-regions of Ganderbal district of Kashmir Data were collected through a structured interview schedule from 240 respondents i.e., 80 each from the three sub-regions. The analysis of data revealed that respondents were predominantly young had low level of education belonged to Muslim religion and were from the general caste category with medium sized nuclear family. Agricultural labor was the major occupation; they had marginal land and medium livestock holding with more than 7 years of poultry farming experience. The average flock size was 8 birds and they reared birds in free-range/backyard system with little supplementary feeding. The production level was very low. Natural hatching was the main source of chicks. No systematic care was taken with regard to the diseases and vaccination of the birds was also not carried out in any of the villages surveyed. Direct marketing was prevalent in the study area although middlemen also existed. The major constraints identified were high incidence of poultry diseases, lack of suitable germ-plasm and attack by predators.