Veterinarian in Society

SHEEP AND GOAT

Sheep

• Sheep was one of the early animals, which was domesticated about 8700 BC. In India, sheep keeping was practiced evidently from Pre-Harappan period through to Mauryan Age. The dominant form of sheep rearing still remained of nomadic nature. Domestication of sheep, besides ensuring a permanent meat supply, also improved the supply of skin, hair (wool), fat, and bones. Sheep rearing is an exclusive occupation of a class of herders traditionally marked out as a pastoral caste.
  • Sheep were one of the first animals tamed by the human race. The ancestry of sheep is not as known as the other domestic animals.
  • Most of the sheep today probably came from the wild sheep called Moufflons and the Asiatic Urial.
  • Sheep were used by the early colonist mainly for their wool production

Goat

• People found in the Indian states of Madhya Pradesh, Maharastra, and Rajasthan and they reared goats and other animals. Goats were domesticated earlier, and served mankind for longer period for their milk and other products. Gaddi goats resembling the ancestral wild goats are still used for carrying goods in the higher Himalayan region of India. The greatest artistic creations of Harappan culture are seals resembling goats, which greatly supported the animal husbandry in Indus Valley civilization. Goats serve mankind providing meat, milk, fiber and therefore, appropriately called poor man’s cow.
  • Goats may have been the first tamed animals in Western Asia.
  • Goats are closely related to sheep.
  • Early goat importations into the US came from Switzerland.
  • Most of the increase in milk goat numbers has occurred since 1900.
  • Many are kept on small farms, and there are few large herds of milk goats.