The Current State of Goat Raising in The City of Uşak Problems and Suggestions for Solutions

In the present study, it is aimed to determine the current state of the goat raising businesses operating in the city of Uşak and in its provinces, their problems and to come up with suggestions for solutions to these problems. In the current study, as the sampling of the study, 132 goat-raising businesses were selected by means of stratified random sampling method and they were administered a questionnaire consisted of 83 questions. The data obtained from the analysis of the questionnaires have revealed that high majority of the goat-raisers are elementary school graduates (86.4%) and they generally raise Hair goat (89.4%). Moreover, it has also been determined that for the mating of goats, male goats are brought into the herd in September and October and this mating process occurs in the form of free insemination, the age for female goats to be used as stock is 15-18 months old, additional feeding and synchronization are not generally practiced and weaning of baby goats occurs when they are 3-4 months old. Births are usually given in February-March and milking also starts in this period and lasts 6 months on average, the lactation milk yield is 60-80 liters, milking is performed once a day with hand and the produced milk is mostly used in cheese production. Moreover, in goat raising, transhumance is not a common practice and high majority of the breeders apply regular protective vaccines. As in many other regions, many problems such as high feed prices, the difficulty in finding a shepherd and price fluctuations force goat breeders to quit. For goat raising to be sustainable, technical and economic supports given to breeders should continue and improve. If the feed can be supplied with the internal resources of the businesses and if their products can be marketed directly without using intermediaries then some of the problems can be alleviated. Putting greater emphasis on this issue and developing incentive policies will make contributions to goat raising. As a result of the present study, it was concluded that developing goat raising businesses operating mostly as small-scale family businesses in the city of Uşak to large-scale businesses where intensive production is made by providing the necessary incentives and subsides is of great importance.