| Abstrakt: |
Livestock farming is traditional farming practice among Nepali farmers as an integrated farming with agriculture. Cattle and Buffalo farming has emerged as an important source of livelihood, which plays significant role in generating gainful employment and income generation opportunities, particularly among the landless, small, marginal farmers and women of rural sector, thus ensures regular flow of money from urban to rural areas which support the food and nutrition security at household level of rural and urban areas. Random purposive sampling technique household survey was conducted among 122 livestock farmers in Panauti, Banepa and Panchkhal Municiplity of Kavrepalanchock district of Nepal. The study was based on the quantitative as well as qualitative data. The results showed that family with more number of females could reap better production. Cattle and buffalo farming's efficiency was found to be high among the farmers where care and management of animals was performed mostly by females however, 98% of females were involved in tedious task on livestock production. Improved housing system, higher the years of experience, roughages with added legumes, concentrate with added oilcakes, timely and proper medicinal services had positive impact in increasing production efficiency. Labour cost (52.37%) was the major cost component in total variable cost followed by feed cost (22.44 %).The study found that total cost of production, annual income, net return, gross return was more in buffalo farming than mixed farming of cattle and buffalo. B/C ratio of buffalo farming (1.36) was higher than mixed farming of cattle and buffalo (1.27), and cattle farming (1.25). Besides being preferred occupation by farmers, cattle and buffalo farming suffers from a lot of problems; high production cost, insecure market, shortage of feeds and fodder, high incidence of diseases, lack of skilled manpower and quality technical services. Farmers with women visibility need to be motivated to start the professional livestock farming of focusing on the increase in income. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
