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Agriculture and animal husbandry activities constitute the backbone of any rural economy. Whilst the former remains the primary source of income, livestock rearing provides supplementary income for the rural poor. Like everywhere else in the country, the small, marginal, and landless eastern India farmers comprise more than 80% of this region’s entire agricultural community – traditionally rear goats.
Goat Breeding in India - An Overview
Agriculture and animal husbandry activities constitute the backbone of any rural economy. Whilst the former remains the primary source of income, livestock rearing provides supplementary income for the rural poor. Like everywhere else in the country, the small, marginal, and landless eastern India farmers comprise more than 80% of this region’s entire agricultural community – traditionally rear goats.
And the indigenous breed of goat in this part of the world is the "Black Bengal Goat".
The Black Bengal is well known all over the world for its excellent meat quality. However, this very high demand for its meat has brought its peril – the castration of male kids at an earlier age to get a higher growth rate and to avoid the development of 'goaty' odour in the meat. This has resulted in the non-availability of sufficient numbers of breeding males in village areas across its natural habitat – stretching from eastern Bihar & Jharkhand to lower Assam (encapsulating the entire riverine plains West Bengal and Bangladesh in between).
To estimate the magnitude of the problem, it may be noted that West Bengal has livestock resources counting 16.279 million goats among the total Indian goat population of 148.88 million. Goat meat production stands at a level of 270 tonnes. Goats also produce 5.63 million tonnes of milk in India. However, each of these products’ demand remains at a much higher level than these supply figures. (Livestock Census 2019, Govt of India)
