Livestock Futures

It is a very common spectacle to see livestock wandering about the city in most urban places in India . Even in towns and cities, apart from in the villages and suburbs, livestock such as cows, buffaloes, pigs, chicken etc. are kept as a means of additional income to the household and also as a source of food.

Urban centres provide proper advantageous reasons to facilitate livestock keeping, because fodder for the animals is easily available (due to food waste and surplus products from hotels and restaurants, and vegetables from houses and marketplaces) and the markets are also easy to avail of, especially due to the demand for fresh milk from the dairies in the cities. But, even though there are these advantages, livestock keeping in urban areas also has to face certain problems such as lack of adequate grazing space, water which the cattle and drink and also bathe in, and a place to store the dung for sale. Additionally, these problems also include the difficulty of fodder and dung clogging up storm drains, people complaining about the awful smell, and roaming herds of cattle hold up traffic too.

People who keep livestock in the cities despite the odds, usually have a source of income apart from this, which can be anything from laundry and cleaning to working in the construction business. This possibility of having additional sources of income is what makes keeping livestock in urban areas worthwhile. Fodder and space to keep the animals is available, and people just have to overcome the disadvantages, which they are willing to do due to the many opportunities the city provides for various sources of income apart from keeping livestock.

Transgenic livestock would be have more immunity towards infectious diseases and help us to know more about the biology of commercial animals, but the technology involved is very complex, the attempts to make such animals has not been successful.

There are some concerns about livestock futures in urban areas, such as problems about cattle roaming about the city and also the decision to evict pigs. The Karnataka Municipal Corporations Act 1976 has legislation on livestock keeping in cities and this states that to keep more than ten animals in a corporation area, one has to get official permission. A minimum fee of Rs.200 is needed as the annual fee for permission to keep livestock, and this is paid by commercial dairy owners and poultry farmers. The Urban Authorities are concerned that the existence of livestock in urban areas hinders their responsibility of keeping up the infrastructure of the cities and towns, which includes delivering drinking water to people living in urban areas, and also keeping the streets clean. Such concerns foreshadow that livestock futures might be in peril, because steps will be taken by authorities to discourage keeping livestock in cities or they might also make it illegal. To ensure the livestock futures are good, people have to implement plans to cut out the inconveniences and drawbacks caused by keeping livestock.