Highly-educated youth taking up goat rearing, says ICAR-CIRG director

The scientific approach and training provided by Mathura-based ICAR goat research institute has helped farmers double their income and attract highly-educated youth to goat rearing, an official of the institute said.

Earlier, it was presumed that goat keeping is meant for only illiterate people, however, now it is taking shape of an alluring business amongst literate youth also, M S Chauhan, the director of ICAR-Central Institute of research on Goats, said.

"Basically it (ICAR-CIRG) was a research institute founded on July 12, 1979. It was never dreamt that besides excelling in research work, the institute would become a model for providing job opportunities to highly literate youth and doubling the income of the farmers," Chauhan said on the eve of foundation day of the institute.

Project officer and principal scientist M K Singh said that as goat keeping has been given scientific touch with intensive training and value addition, even highly literate youth are also joining the trade.

The institute started "Multiplier Flock Scheme" in 2015-16 to save further degradation of breed purity which has found widespread acceptance, he said.

"Stall feeding, availability of good quality of reproductive buck and scientific way to upkeep goats in limited space with alluring financial return has attracted me to opt this trade," Vivek Singh, a former transporter from Dhaulpur, said.

"Now, I have decided to enhance my unit for more income and give employment to youths," he said.

Software engineer Radhey Shyam of Karnal, Haryana, who also has taken up the occupation, said that ICAR-CIRG has given scientific touch to the trade by imparting intensive training on goat keeping and value addition.