干旱区生态环境知识资源中心

Camel rearing in northwestern arid region of Rajasthan was studied in 8 districts, these fall in 5 agro climatic zones of state. Camels are reared based on traditional knowledge by utilising natural available resources and the main utilities are self domestic use, breeding and selling purpose. Mostly camels are managed on rangelands, community land, restricted controlled pasture lands (gochers or orans-vernacular words). Traditional feeding constituting exclusively grazing plus providing some supplementation of leaves during lean period has shifted to grazing plus providing some additional local fodder to meet the dry,, matter requirement. None of the respondents provide mineral mixture to their camels. Majority of the camel keepers (60%) feed single type of local grown fodder whereas (39.0%) farmers feed mixed dry fodder. Generally green forage is not offered except 23.4% farmers of Hanumangarh and Sriganganagar district and Rajgarh tehsil of Churu, mostly from a green belt, who offer green chana fodder to their camels. Concentrate supplementation once a week is done only to debilitated camels (1 to 2 kg) against scientific recommendation of 2-3 kg/d. Irrespective of season, camels are generally kept in open housing system. Failure of availabilitiy of conventional flora and grazing resources due to frequent drought, shrinking of grazing land owing to fast urbanisation and restriction imposed by the forest department has forced camel breeders to offer some straw in addition to grazing in the rangeland thus, increasing cost of feed input.