Improvement on growth and reduction of kid's mortality through adoption of brooding technique in goats in the mid-hill of Nepal

Abstract

The mortality of kid's is serious problem in commercial goat farming in Nepal. There are various factors which affect the growth rate and mortality of kids. One of the main factors is rearing management during early age of kids but more research focused on feeding and treatment only. So an experiment was carried out to reveal the effect of brooding management system for growth and mortality of kids in goat at National Goat Research Program, Bandipur, Tanahun of Nepal from October 2020 to February 2021. All together 96 newly born goat's kids were included in this experiment from three pure breeds which were born late October to early November 2020. Among them 32 kids of each breeds of pure Khari, pure Barbari and pure Boer were maintained which were divided in to two equal groups. One group was reared with their mother in normal shed where no any bedding material and extra heating mechanism was provided and another group was reared in well bedded shed and two brooders was provided. Data of birth weight, one month to four months weight of every kids, monthly weight gain and number of death kids were recorded and data were analyzed using IBM SPSS 26. This result showed that breeds, sex and management of rearing system affect significantly (p<0.01) for the growth and mortality of kids in goat. The body weight of pure Barbari and pure Khari was similar but it was higher in pure Boer. Similarly, the kids which reared under brooding management were more body weight than those reared in nonbrooding condition. The body weight gain of kids from one to two months, two to three months and three to four months under non-brooding condition was 92, 78, 77 and 74 gm/d whereas it was found 168, 129, 123 and 120 gm/d respectively in brooding management. Similarly, the mortality of kids was found 4.17 percent under brooding management whereas it became 35.42 percent in non-brooding condition.