Adoption Behaviour of Donkey Rearers on Various Donkey Management Practices

Donkeys are agile, firm and resilient animals with a great deal of tolerance. Donkeys are most predominantly used for transporting salt, farm manure and agricultural commodities in hilly areas not accessible by road transport. A total of 160 donkey rearers were selected as beneficiaries from eight districts of Tamil Nadu for the project on conservation of donkeys through empowerment of donkey rearers in Tamil Nadu. The adoption behaviour of donkey rearers on various donkey management practices was elicited through a pre-tested structured interview schedule before the implementation of the project. With regard to housing, majority of the donkey rearers (66 %) did not provide shelter for donkeys and were dwelling in open places. Only 33 per cent of donkey farmers provided some form of shelter for donkeys in the form of thatched roof sheds, asbestos sheds to protect the donkeys from extreme weather conditions. With regard to feeding management, more than half of the respondents were feeding bran and ragi and oilcakes to their donkeys. It was observed that cent per cent of the respondents were allowing their donkeys for grazing for roughage intake and none of the donkey rearers fed mineral mixture to the donkeys. With regard to health management, majority of the donkey owners (58.75 %) preferred traditional practices for treating donkeys and only sixteen per cent of the respondents preferred allopathic treatment by veterinarians for their donkeys. It was reported that incidence of Tetanus was high leading to considerable mortality in donkeys. The reason attributed was due to due to harness, saddle and other wounds leading to infection. It was observed that more than three fourth of donkey rearers were not vaccinating the donkeys against tetanus and rabies. It was clearly evident that donkey rearers in Tamil Nadu were not provided any training on various managemental practices Hence, knowledge and skill empowerment of donkey rearers is the need of the hour to reduce disease incidence and thereby in-situ conservation of donkeys.