STUDY ON TRADITIONAL CATTLE FATTENING PROGRAM AT THREE UPAZILA’S OF RANGPUR DISTRICT IN BANGLADESH

Abstract

The experiment was conducted to investigate the cattle fattening programs of rural farmers at three Upazila (Gongachora, Pirgacha, Kaunia) in Rangpur district of Bangladesh through field survey. Data were collected from randomly selected 75 farmers who involved in small scale cattle fattening through personal interview schedule during the period from 10th June to 10th July, 2015.. Out of the 75 respondents 57.3% are involved in agriculture, 25.3% in business, 12.1% in service and 5.8% in beef fattening. With a mean of 1.72 and standard deviation is 0.8.The total respondents were classified into four categories. The major category 43 of the respondents belongs to farmer categories which has also own land and 19 businessman, 9 service holder and 4 are directly related to cattle fattening. Most of the farmers (57.3%) who are directly related to Agriculture are more involved in fattening than those who are related to business (25.3%) or service sector (12.1%) respectively. Most of the respondents (46.7%) fattened cattle for 6 months and rest fattened for a prolonged period. About 58.7% respondents used own capital for cattle fattening and 28.0and 13.3% respondents took bank loan, NGO loan and lending for cattle fattening, respectively. About 31.6% respondents provided existing traditional cattle shed. About 38.6% did not have any training on cattle fattening whereas about 61.3% respondents had taken short training on cattle fattening. About 63.7% respondents used cattle fattening tablets, 12.7% respondents used urea molasses straw (UMS) and 31% followed conventional feeding. About 86.6.6% vaccinate the cattle by themselves and about 78.6% took help from veterinary surgeon for treatment of their cattle. About 94.6% reported shortages of animal feed, 88% reported lack of credit and 94.6% reported high cost of feed as the major problems of small scale cattle fattening. The results of this study will be useful for farmers and researchers to identify the overall problems and their vii remedies on feeding, management and marketing related to small scale cattle fattening practices in Bangladesh. The main problem in adopting cattle fattening was lack of money & knowledge. The Govt. should give subsidy in this sector as well as provides effective training to improve cattle fattening program.