Study on Existing Husbandry Management Practices of Cattle Rearing in Selected Areas of Bangladesh

Abstract

The study was executed to explore the present husbandry management practices of cattle rearing in selected areas of Bangladesh. A total 719 of samples were selected using simple random sampling technique from 14 selected upazilas of 9 districts. Data were collected through well-developed, pre-tested objective-based questionnaire and on-farm face to face direct interview. Data were analyzed using MS Excel and SPSS 20 software with descriptive statistics. From the study it was found that farmers were used half grazing (39.97%), full grazing (33.63%) and stall feeding (26.40%) cattle rearing systems. Most of the cattle sheds were found shabby type (47.89%). The average time of grazing and taking care of cattle were found 6.08 and 5.25 hours/day respectively. However, in intensive system straw and concentrate feed (8.04% and 14.94%) and in semi-intensive system grass and concentrate (5.67% and 7.47%) were provided. Most of the farmers (52.02%) used chopped roughage followed by balance ration (9.64%) of feeding technology. Moreover, most of the farmers irrespective of areas used wheat bran (65.07%) and rice police (49.92%) to feed their cattle. The scenarios of fodder cultivation of different study areas were found poor. Furthermore, the farmers had taken animal quarantine (24.19%), used cleaning farm premises (90.26%) and controlled rodents and external parasite (52.26%). Irrespective of areas regular cleaning, de-worming, vaccination, disinfect and did not take any kind of measure were 88.52%, 67.61%, 63.37%, 17.44% and 11.72% respectively. It may be concluded that there was a lack of knowledge found about scientific management practices in rearing cattle and scope for improvement of management practices of cattle for better milk and meat production in the context of Bangladesh.