Economic Goat rearing:Nutritional strategies
Dr.SonaliPrusty* * Assistant professor, Department of Animal Nutrition, College of Veterinary Science and Animal Husbandry, Anjora, Durg, Chhattisgarh
Goat enterprise is the most suitable start up plan for poor and marginal farmers and new entrepreneurs in animal husbandry sector. It involves least risk factors involved regarding profit or loss compared to large ruminants or poultry. The initial investment is very less in goat farming. Further due to small body size, docile nature housing requirements and managemental problems with goats are less. Maintaining good quality cross bred goats well suited to local agro-climate with high growth rate and liked by local consumers will ascertain the improvement in profit margin. Facilities from state veterinary department can be availed for de-worming, vaccination and routine check up to further reduce the cost of rearing and improve profit. Feeding cost accounts, a major portion of livestock rearing. Along with above factors if the burden of feed cost could be reduced,the cost of production will decrease, and successful goat farming could be established. Some feeding strategies suggested for reducing feeding cost by farmers/entrepreneurs is are as follows.
Extensive or semi-extensive browsing: Goats can be reared solely on extensive or on semi-extensive browsing either on shrubs or trees around the farm area or open pastures.Since goats require very less drinking water, they can spend a long duration on browsing. Goats can choose among the available fodders for parts of plants with the highest protein content and better nutritive value. Goats sometimes show preferenceforcomparatively fibrous parts than tender parts to improve rumen function. Goats are ideal for mixed species grazing. They can utilize woody plants and weeds, not typically consumed by other species of animals like cattle and sheep. A higher digestibility of nutrients has been observed in goats in comparison with sheep on consuming roughages with low crude protein and high fibre and lignin contents.Goats consume several different plant species. Treeleaves like Melia azedarach,Morus alba and Leucaena proved to be excellent feedstuffs for goats. Goats prefer tree leaves like Sesbania (Agathi, agasti), Gliricidia, Ber, Bhimal etc. Neem leaves are also palatable to goats. Goats adopted to tannin containing leaves may consume large amounts of tannins through the synthesis of tannin-binding salivary proteins, without exhibiting illness.Rumen microflora of goat containsstrains of tannin tolerant bacteria. Goats can browse on high tannin containing acacia species. Trees and shrubs, which often represent poor quality roughage sources for cattle, because of their highly lignified stems and bitter taste, may be adequate to high in quality for goats. The most exciting feature of tree leaves is their high CP content that goes from 20-30%. Neem leaves and cakes when taken by goats serve role of anthelmintic for goats.
Agro-industrial by-products: Agro-industrial by-products are mostly derived from cereal grain milling, oilseed extraction, brewery and malt production, fruit and vegetable processing industries. These by-products of agroindustry or feeds of other origin are not commonly practised in livestock feed either because of their less palatability or presence of incriminating factors in them. But their inclusion in livestock ration is gaining interest due to the wide gap between demand and availability of animal feeds. Researchis ongoing for their inclusion at safe levels in the diet of livestock. Numerous studies have proven that manyby-products could be safely included in animal feed, without compromising animal health, their growth and product safety and human welfare.They are relatively cheap or bear no cost. Goats can adapt to abroad range of feeding conditions due to high saliva secretion and large absorption surface ofthe rumen epithelium. The above nature protects the animal from the risk of acidosis. Researchers suggest that there occurs considerable enlargement of the digestive apparatus when highly fibrous feed isused. So, goat as small ruminant is having tremendous scope for including such feeds in their diet.
Feed pellets: When there is lack of pastureland,but availability of abundant crop residues and agro-industrial by-products stall feeding is favourable for goat rearing. In above situations it has been seen that compound pelleted feeds were beneficial over conventional feeding system in terms of weight gain, feed conversion, protein conversion, digestibility of nutrients, carcass weight and lean meat production in black Bengal goats. Unconventional by-products like red gram straw when used upto 50% in the diet of Osmanabadigoat as mesh feed and pelleted feed, they performed better in terms of voluntary intake and weight gain on pelleted feed than mesh feed.Studies also suggest use of some nutritionally inert compounds with flavours of truffle, garlic, and onion to be tried for use in pellets for masking any undesirable feed flavours, that would further improve intake and performance. Agro-industrial by-product-based pellets seem an interesting technology to reduce the use of conventional feed resources and to satisfy feed demands of a herd. Pelleted feeds could be offered to goats with more precision compared to mesh feed.
Feed blocks- Feed blocks for goats can be made from cheap ingredients like mixture of agro-industrial by-products,waterand common salt, as well as urea, molasses etc. Feed blocks are manufactured by the cold process that include solidifying agents or binders like quicklime, Magnesium oxide, cement, clay etc.and air-drying until proper hardness and compactness develops.There is scope for higher inclusion of tannin rich foliage in complete feed for goat by using tannin binder like polyethylene glycol.Medicated blocks containing anthelmintic agents can be used to control internal parasites.Some studies have been conducted regarding the above outside India with positive yields.Feed blocks can be enriched with specific minerals for their effective intake, in the mineral deficit herds and improve the reproductive performance of the herd. Researchers report such feeding strategy to improved productionperformance in goats.With above suggested treatments use of concentrate feeds can bepartially or completely withdrawn, thus reducing feeding costs without any detrimental effects on performances.
Minerals supplementation: Due to deficiency of Copper and Cobalt anorexia and wastingoccur in goats. Selenium deficiency in adults lead to decreased pregnancy rate, increased cases of abortion. Deficiency of Ca, P & Vit. D may result in rickets in kids and osteomalacia in adults.Mineral supplementation in diet at 2.5% of concentrate feed is essential to prevent this deficiency. To reduce the cost on mineral supplementation, minerals deficient in specific area may be supplemented in their salt form such as Cu sulphate, Co sulphate, limestone, Dicalcium phosphate, sodium selenite etc. taking advice from Veterinarians.
Reducing cost on medications: The second largest cost associated with goat farmingafter feed is expenditure on medicines. Goats are very fragile animals those encounter a lot of infectious and non-infectious diseases. The economic loss due to internal or external parasitic infestation is extremely high in a herd. The problem exaggerates in an extensive or semi-extensive grazing system as most of the internal parasite are present in pasture. Routine examination of the faeces should be conducted, and deworming should be carried out accordingly. Also, vaccination against prevalent diseases like Enterotoxaemia, PPR and foot and mouth disease should be done as per the Veterinary practitioners’ advice. It would check the mortality rate of herd to maximum limit. Inspection of herd routinely would be helpful to check spread of infectious diseases like ulcerative dermatosis, orf, fungal diseases etc.
