Traditional sheep and goat farming practices of Tamil Nadu

The dominant form of sheep rearing still remain of nomadic nature. Domestication of sheep, besides ensuring a permanent meat supply, also improved the supply of skin, hair (wool), fat, and bones. Among seven agro-climatic zones of Tamil Nadu, top four zones namely North Western Zone, Western Zone, Southern Zone, North-Eastern Zone were selected based on the highest livestock population. From each zone one district and a total number of 60 farmers each from each district were selected for the study, which comprised a total number of 240 farmers. A total number of 21 traditional sheep and goat farming practices were identified. The top five traditional sheep and goat farming practices were selection of goat based on whorls, cauterization done on sheep - usually sheep’s ear or tail was cut to bleed, fodder trees supplementation to goats, Rams / Bucks are given as a gift in marriages of tribal communities and tying the tabeez around the neck of sheep and goat. In order to find out the level of usage of traditional practices by the respondents, the respondents were categorized into low, medium and high based on their frequency of usage of each traditional practice. Majority of the sheep traditional respondents fell into medium group (50.2 %) followed by high (25.4 %) and low (23.2%) categories.