Economic performance of different ruminant livestock keeping systems of rural households in a southern Indian province
- Publication Type
- Journal contribution
- Authors
- Sastry,N.S.R.; Bullerdieck,P.; Gall,C.F.
- Year of publication
- 1992
- Published in
- Indian Journal of Animal Sciences
- Band/Volume
- 62/
- Page (from - to)
- 1083-1091
From 275 methodically selected rural households in the Union Territory of Pondicherry ?158 Iandless (LL), 82 marginal farmer (MF, <2ha), 26 small farmer (SF, 2. - 4 ha) and 9 bigger farmers (BF, >4 ha) - detailed information on all aspects of Iivestock keeping was collected in 1989 for the previous year by personal interviews using a specially designed questionnaire. The most common Iivestock keeping trends were: only cows (43.4%), only goats (13.3%) and mixed herds/flocks of large and small ruminants in LL; only cows (51.2%), mixed herds of large ruminants (22.0%) in MF; mixed herds/flocks of large and small ruminants (30.3%) and only cows (19.2%) in SF; and mixed herds of large ruminants (88.9%) in BF. Keeping mixed herds of large or large plus small ruminants gave good income in all household categories. Keeping dairy cows alone caused a small loss of about Rs 318/cow in case of landless households only. This was due to higher feed costs and lower milk yields per animal.