Telangana is ahead of other States in distribution of sheep and rise in sheep population, Minister for Animal Husbandry and Dairy Development Talasani Srinivas Yadav said on Saturday.
At an orientation programme held here for district-level officers on the second phase of sheep distribution scheme and other activities of the Animal Husbandry Department, the Minister said that the department had secured a special recognition after formation of the State as Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao had been encouraging community-based vocations, particularly sheep-rearing.
As part of strengthening the rural economy, the State government had introduced the sheep distribution scheme and spent ₹5,000 crore on the first phase, which had become a big success with multi-fold growth of income for the shepherd community, he mentioned. The government had allocated ₹6,000 crore for the second phase of the scheme that was launched at Huzurabad on July 28.
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Keeping in mind the increased costs, Mr. KCR had increased the unit cost to ₹1.75 lakh from ₹1.25 lakh in the first phase, he said, adding that an arrangement was made to get the sheep units insured at the point of purchase itself. He directed officials to ensure that claims against death of sheep were settled in 10 days as there were instances of shepherds suffering loss due to lack of claim settlement.
The Minister explained that 79.16 lakh sheep were distributed in the first phase and they had given birth to another 30 lakh lambs. The worth of lambs and meat produced was about ₹7,800 crore and the sheep had helped production of 93,000 tonnes of meat. After the implementation of first phase of sheep distribution, their population was 1.91 crore as per Centre’s statistics.
To meet the increase in fodder demand for the increased sheep population, fodder-grass was grown in government vacant land and the government started supplying grass seed on subsidy to shepherds. Collectors were asked to identify 5 acres land each for constructing sheep markets in every district with the work to be taken up soon at Khammam, Peddapalli and Wanaparthy.
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The Minister also stated that de-worming exercise for sheep and goat across the State would start from August 6 to 13 and it would be launched in Gajwel.