Climate Change & Stress Management: Sheep & Goat Production

Sheep and goat rearing is a traditional occupation of small, marginal farmers and landless labourers in semiarid, arid, hilly and mountain regions of the country, inhospitable to conventional crop cultivation. Small ruminants produce food and fibre at relatively low cost from feed materials from land that often cannot be used for conventional crop production. Higher production efficiency of the two species is not only due to their ability to sustain on sparse vegetation of degraded rangeland and efficient utilization of top feed resources but also early puberty, short gestation period, high prolificacy, rapid growth rate, quality meat, milk and carpet wool production and good marketability.