Socioeconomic Investigation and Husbandry Management Practices of Native Sheep Rearing Farmers in Selected Areas of Bangladesh

The present research was design to explore the socioeconomic conditions, the existing husbandry management practices along with the problems and constraints of native sheep rearing farmers at the field level. The data was collected from purposively selected 11 upazilas of 6 districts in Bangladesh. The data was collected through a pre-tested interview schedule from 1768 sheep rearing farmers by using simple random sampling technique and analyzed descriptively. The research revealed that 52.65% of farmers were literate in the study areas and most of them (32.52%) were studied classes 1 to 5. The literacy rate of the sheep farmers was the highest in Nikhongchari and Subornochar upazilas. The main occupation of sheep rearing farmer was agriculture (65.16%). However, the landholdings and annual income were found 122.01±8.85 decimal and BDT 80 thousand respectively. The highest landholding and annual income were found in Subornochar (373.19 decimal) and Copanigonj upazillas (BDT 215 thousand) respectively. Moreover, Subornochar and Copanigonj upazilas were found rich in livestock assets than the other surveyed areas. The highest herd size of sheep per household found 76.61±8.90 and 30.71±7.26 in Copanigonj and Subornochar upazilas respectively. In all irrespective of areas, the herd size per household was found 13.27±1.23. Among all types of sheep ewe (56.47%) was the highest because farmers normally kept ewes for further reproduction, ram and wither were sold early in the market. Furthermore, the existing management practices of native sheep found poor irrespective of areas. Most of the farmers have no separated shed and 21.50% of them used cow shed as the housing of native sheep. Hence, the feeding system was mostly the entire free movement system (49.33%) and the average time for field feeding was 9.33±0.05 hours/day. The farmers used open land (66.34%) and roadside (61.53%) as pasture land for their sheep. The highest 43.15% of farmers reported a shortage of natural feeding land followed by disease and treatment (41.00%) related problems. The organized efforts should be taken to incorporate a feasible and sustainable management system of native sheep and consequently to improve the socioeconomic conditions of rural poor farmers in Bangladesh.