International Journal of Agriculture Extension and Social Development

author(s)
Saugata Sasmal, Dibyendu Das, Ankit Thakur and MK Verma

abstract
This research work explains some of the in-station and on-farm research on livestock-fish or livestock-fish-crops integration in Bastar and some plain region of Chhattisgarh. The adoption of this technique however, depends on social acceptance coupled with the availability of such land situations and introduction of new formulated rations. The planktophagous species such as the Indian Major Carps directly gets benefits from the integration by filtering the bacteria-laden particulate matter from the livestock/poultry faeces. Other omnivorous species benefit indirectly by the increased feed availability of macrophytes and filamentous algae. Nevertheless, it is critical that the organic loading of the water be judiciously monitored to avoid adverse physico-chemical (such as deficit of dissolved oxygen, increase in ammonia concentration) and biological (blooms of blue green algae such as Microcystis spp and flagellates such as Euglena spp) environments for the cultured fish. In addition to fish livestock integration, rice fish integration was also considered in Bastar region as the terrain is undulating in Bastar which can be agro-ecologically classified in to upland (Marhan), sloppy midland (Tikra), midland (Mal) and lowland (Gabhar). However, it was found to be unsuitable in Chhattisgarh plains. The low lying segment gets flooded with the first monsoon rains in the month of June. This low land segment covers approximately 20% of the cultivable land. The soil is clayey and water logging is the main feature. Here mixed or synchronous farming, where rice and fish are grown together were taken for the study. Various designs of pond / trench refuse have been tried along with various percentage covered area of refuse with depth and size of trench, the population and size of fish also have an impact on the production potential from this farming system. Wild duck (Naghans) cum fish farming were also done at Village- Bolbola, Dist-Kondagaon, Bastar @ 300-350 birds/ha. 1200 kg of duck meat and 2600 kg of fish were produced during entire culture period. Pig cum fish farming with 40 piglets of improved T&D variety/ha pond.