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National level e-symposium on “Agroforestry system for augmenting livestock
productivity and empowering resource poor rural farmers”

S2-1

Availability, feeding and chemical composition of forest feed resources in high altitude north-
western Himalayan (Gurez) valley of Kashmir

Yasir Afzal Beigh*, Abdul Majeed Ganai, Haidar Ali Ahmad
Division of Animal Nutrition, Faculty of Veterinary Sciences and Animal Husbandry, Shuhama, Alusteng,
Srinagar -190 006, Sher-e-Kashmir University of Agricultural Sciences and Technology of Kashmir, J&K
(* Presenting author: vetyasir1@gmail.com)

Introduction
Under mountain agro-ecosystems, animal husbandry remains one of the most important means of
providing livelihood and nutritional security to the majority of rural masses. Gurez, a far remote valley of
Kashmir in India’s North-Western high altitude Himalayas. The region being bestowed with rich natural
resources in the form of dense forests and meadows along with typical mountainous terrain provide enormous
scope for livestock especially small ruminants based production system. In this context, the present study
was undertaken with the aim to gather information regarding availability, practices of feeding and chemical
composition of forest based feed resources in Gurez valley.

Material and Methods

The study was carried out in Gurez valley, one of three tehsils of district Bandipore in Kashmir. For
the study, the area was arbitrarily divided into three zones viz., Lower Gurez, Middle Gurez and Upper
Gurez where three villages in each zone were selected. In each village, seven farmer families were selected
randomly for the study. A single-visit formal survey was done to collect data through household interviews
using a pre-tested, structured questionnaire. The samples of forest based feed resources offered to the animals
were collected from each household, composited and chemically analyzed for proximate composition, fibre
fractions, major macro-minerals, and trace minerals. Besides, macro-nutrient content (nutritive value) of the
feed resources was also calculated. The nominal data was analysed using chi-square test to draw the inference.
Results and discussion

Forest grass hay was among the major sources of dry roughages in the ration of animals, while pasture
grasses in natural grazing was the main and important green forage source for livestock during summers as
responded by all the farmers (100%). During summer season, majority of the farmers (81%) simply left the
animals for grazing in the community forests (5%) and/or meadows (95%) for 8-10 hours, where grasses form
their main diet. Tree foliages were offered by the farmers (92%) as supplemental feed to the animals. Poplus
leaves happened to be the most common and abundant tree foliage for livestock. Tree foliages were offered
less commonly as browse (28%) and mostly as loppings (100%) or preserved the same in various ways for
feeding during lean winter season. These findings are in agreement with Yadav et al. (2003). The chemical
compositions of these feed resources were within the normal ranges (ICAR, 2013) with slight variations;
however, tree foliages were rich source of crude protein, ether extract and minerals making them useful
supplementary source in straw based diets.

Institute of Animal Nutrition, Centre for Animal Production Studies, TANUVAS
National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development 63