Welfare assessment of Goats at b ackyard s mall scale f ar ms at Kalukhali Upazila, Rajbari, Bangladesh

Abstract

Goat farming has become very popular in the rural areas of Bangladesh and most of the goats are reared in backyard system. The issue of Animal Welfare is a growing concern in goat farms nowadays. However, in backyard goat farming there is very scarce information related to animal welfare. A study was conducted on 80 goat farms at Kalukhali Upazila in Rajbari District of Bangladesh to get an estimated conception about the current status of animal welfare focusing Human-Animal Relationships (HARs) in the backyard goat farming of Bangladesh. The study also showed some indirect relation between HARs and diseases. Some common mal practices that is the cause of some common disease condition as well as poor animal welfare were also discussed in this study. The result showed that 87.5% of the farmers had less than 5 goats. The water source was 100% from tube-well. Around 60% of the farmers used to feed the goats twice in a day and 88.8% of them had the mal-practice of feeding rice. The major floor, roof, wall and bed materials were earth (87.5%), tin (65%), tin (48.8%) and straw (23.8%) accordingly. About 80% of the goats had more than 2 square meter of floor space. Highly significant (P<0.001) association were found between the farm size with feeding per day, roof materials, wall materials, dampness and stocking density. Only 11.2% farmers handled the goats roughly. Use of stick was recorded in 13.8% farms. Nine percent of the farm’s goats were fearful to the owners. Highly significant (P<0.001) association were found between handling procedure with the use of stick and the reaction of goats while handling. Deworming and vaccination were done in 85% and 42.5% of the farms. Frequent common cold and diarrhea were found in 30% and 42.5% of the farms. Age of castration was very early age at 15-20 days mostly and 37.5% of the farms didn’t use any anesthetics while castration procedure. The average stockman-ship score was 11.125 and the median score was 10, where the maximum and minimum possible score are +31 and -26. The most scores were distributed from 2 to 20 with a standard deviation of 5.7619 and 2 farms were found with negative scoring. Based on the findings it can be concluded that the backyard goat farming is usually done with more compassion by farmers. The little poor welfare was mainly due to ignorance, poor economy and some traditional mal-practices. If these factors can be eradicated, animal welfare will be improved and the backyard goat farming will be more sustainable.