Sitamaya Tamang from Rasuwa remembers the pride she felt when her goat gave birth to twins, until both kids died of diarrhea within a week. She had no vet nearby, no medicines, and no idea what went wrong. For her, like thousands of rural women across Nepal, goat farming is a way of life and a lifeline.
Yet, despite its prevalence, this practice has rarely translated into stable income, scalable production, or sustainable livelihoods.
The difference in goat farming and chicken farming
In almost every rural corner of Nepal, goats are seen tied outside homes, on mountain trails, or nibbling on scattered fodder near forest edges. They are a symbol of security, tradition, and a fallback economic plan for many families. Yet despite their widespread presence, goat farming has failed to transform into a scalable, sustainable, or profitable enterprise.
This stands in sharp contrast to the trajectory of broiler chicken farming, which, over the past decade, has become a well-oiled, high-yielding machine of meat production.
The difference lies in predictability, planning, and the value chain. Broiler poultry farming is organised, short-cycled, and precision-based. A farmer invests in 500 chicks, receives feed formulated to optimise growth, and within 45 days, has a uniform flock ready for market.
The pricing is clear, based on weight, and sales are often made through contract farming or known vendors. The technical know-how, from disease management to feeding schedules, is standardised and widely available.
Now contrast that with goat farming. The average Nepali goat farmer keeps 3-5 animals, usually of indigenous or crossbreed stock, without a clear growth plan or productivity goal. Goats are reared semi-intensively, often fed forest cuttings and kitchen waste, with minimal supplementation.
Breeding is mostly uncontrolled, with local bucks covering multiple does across households, leading to inbreeding and low genetic progress. This inbreeding results in weaker offspring, slower growth rates, and increased susceptibility to diseases.
There is little to no genetic selection, and farmers rarely have access to improved breeding bucks or artificial insemination services. Nutritional deficiencies due to unbalanced diets cause reproductive failures, low birth weights, and poor milk production, further affecting kid survival and overall farm output.
Health problems like internal parasitism, PPR (Peste des Petits Ruminants), foot rot, pneumonia, and ectoparasites like mites and ticks go undiagnosed or untreated due to limited veterinary access and awareness.
Biosecurity is nonexistent in most farms, and simple preventive measures like vaccination and deworming are inconsistently practiced. Mortality among kids is high, with many farms losing more than 30% of their young stock before maturity.
Disease outbreaks can wipe out entire herds, particularly during the rainy season when shelter conditions are poor. In many villages, lack of quarantine measures during animal movement and intermixing of herds have made disease containment even harder.
Moreover, market access is erratic. Goats are sold mostly during festive seasons, especially Dashain, when demand spikes. The animals are traded in open markets or through middlemen who estimate prices by visual inspection or by counting teeth, not by weighing.
A goat weighing 40 kilograms may be sold at the price of 30 kg simply due to poor negotiation skills or a lack of weighing scales. This undermines farmers’ profits and discourages investment in better practices. While a broiler farmer calculates income per kilogram, the goat farmer often has no record at all.
Climate change has added another layer of vulnerability. Increasing temperatures, erratic rainfall, prolonged dry spells, and new disease patterns are disproportionately affecting traditional livestock systems. Goats, despite being hardy animals, are facing reduced fodder availability, higher parasite loads, and weakened immunity in changing weather conditions. Traditional sheds are not climate-resilient; heat stress, cold drafts, and muddy floors during monsoons make them breeding grounds for disease.
The challenges and ways to overcome
Social dynamics also play a role. Goat farming is still seen as a subsistence activity, often handled by women and elderly household members while younger generations migrate for better opportunities. There’s limited access to training, information, and technical services, especially in remote areas. Investment remains low because goat farming is rarely treated as a commercial enterprise. Even when farmers want to scale up, access to finance remains a challenge due to lack of collateral, banking literacy, and institutional support.
The potential is vast, but to realize it, the entire goat farming approach needs a systemic upgrade. This is where initiatives like those from Heifer International Nepal are making visible impact. Rather than just distributing animals, Heifer focuses on capacity building and systems change.
At the heart of their model is “Passing on the Gift”, a powerful practice where each beneficiary family pledges to pass on the first female kid of their goat to another vulnerable family, along with the knowledge and skills they have gained.
This act builds solidarity, ownership, and a chain of generosity that keeps expanding opportunity. Farmers are trained in climate-smart improved animal management practices, including proper feeding, breeding, and health care.
Improved sheds are promoted that ensure ventilation, drainage, and thermal comfort, making them resilient to climate extremes. Health camps are regularly organised, and local youth are trained as Community Agro-Vet Entrepreneurs (CAVEs), who earn by providing technical services like vaccination, deworming, and basic treatments in areas where veterinarians are scarce.
Cooperatives play a vital role too. Through collective action, farmers gain better access to quality fodder, improved buck services, and accurate market information. Collection centers help aggregate goats and sell based on live weight, ensuring fair prices.
Training in financial literacy and access to microfinance or cooperative loans empower farmers to invest in their farms without falling into debt traps. Importantly, the emphasis is now shifting towards raising one highly productive goat rather than three low-performing ones, promoting efficiency and profitability.
At the national level, government planning remains fragmented. While policies supporting livestock development exist, they often lack localised implementation and continuity. Budget allocations for goat improvement programs are modest and mostly absorbed by administrative expenses.
Veterinary manpower is scarce in hilly and mountain regions, and there is a lack of coordination between agriculture, forest, and livestock offices. Programs like improved breed distribution or vaccination campaigns need to be part of a long-term, evidence-based strategy rather than one-time interventions.
National breeding policies need strengthening, and a concerted effort is needed to regulate buck services, promote community level breeding centers, and control inbreeding. Integration of goat farming into broader rural development strategies like nutrition, climate resilience, youth employment, and gender equity can elevate its importance.
However, stronger partnerships between governmental bodies, NGOs, academic institutions and private sector could be the turning point in transforming goat farming from a livelihood of necessity to a source of prosperity.
Goat farming in Nepal does not lack passion or potential. It lacks the planning, predictability, and professional support that poultry received early on.
If we can replicate even half the model of broiler farming such as standardised management, reliable markets, and fair pricing in goat rearing, we could not only reduce meat imports but significantly boost rural incomes.
The goats are there, the farmers are ready, and with the right interventions, the future of goat farming can be both sustainable and prosperous. As veterinarians, development workers, and policy planners, our role is to turn this silent presence into a success story, one productive goat at a time.
