Pre-weaning kid mortality under family-based farming system: Patterns and economic losses in different agro-climatic regions of West Bengal, India

Abstract

The aim of the study was to assess the pre-weaning kid mortality patterns and financial losses under family-based farming system. To achieve the objective, an ex-post facto study was designed with 300 randomly selected respondents from three agro-climatic situation of West Bengal. The study covered 3,205 kidding with 6,642 kids born. The total pre-weaning kid mortality was 12.32% whereas the relative percentage of mortality was highest (36.19%) in hill agro-climatic followed by terai region (34.11%) and lower Gangetic plain (29.71%). The pattern of pre-weaning kid mortality showed that mortality was higher in doeling than bucking and highest within a month whereas maximum mortality was within 1st week. Kid mortality was significantly higher during winter months. Mortality was highest in kid having less than 1 kg birth weight, in case of quadruplet birth or more and kid born in 6th parity order. Major reasons of kid mortality were unknown followed by diarrhea, doe died, pneumonia and predator attack. The study shows an economic loss of about `531 per kid and `1447 per goat farmers and overall financial losses due to pre-weaning kid mortality were more than `4.34 lakhs during the study period. The pre-weaning kid mortality and economic losses to these farmers can be further reduced through better management practices, prenatal and postpartum healthcare practices of the doe and pre-weaned kid.