Revista Europea de Biología Experimental Acceso abierto

Abstracto

Study of educational needs of nomads utilizing Arasbaran dam watershed in the field of cattle breeding

Nadere Ghasemi and Seyed Davood Hajimirrahimi

Nowadays, the Nomads life development program in the country is carried out in two distinct approaches: 1- settling volunteer nomads in permanent domiciles 2- Organizing migrating nomads. With respect to the fact that eighty eight percent of the nomads in Gharah-ghaia region in East Azarbaijan province volunteer for permanent settling (Taghavi, 1992), the Arasbaran Dam was constructed with the aim of settling them and also elevating their living standards. The capacity of this dam is 25 million cubic
meters, which will mainly be used to irrigate 3200 hectares of farm lands in the dam watershed. It should also be mentioned that sixty percent of the land will be allocated to farming and the rest will be used to establish orchards. This will make it possible to settle twelve tribes of nomads with 607 families comprising 3460 people. With respect to the studies undertaken and by considering climatic conditions of the region, quality of water sources and soil, being in line with development programs of the country raising cattle instead of light livestock and wet farming/gardening eight different agricultural crops has been recommended. Since the nomads in the region have traditionally raised cow and cattle, they lack any knowledge or skills to achieve the above mentioned goals. So, it is necessary to teach them the needed skills and promote their vocational and technical knowledge. Lack of comprehensive information about training and needs of nomads in the mentioned fields is the main subject of this study.This study was carried out in order to evaluate training needs of nomads in the fields of raising cattle, irrigated
farming and gardening. It was carried out by doing a field study. The statistical population included volunteer nomads who wanted to be settled in watershed regions of the Arasbarab dam. The Cochran formula was used with random sampling from one hundred twenty people and data was collected thru interviewing and questionnaire. The result showed that training needs of nomads in the field of raising cattle were was higher than normal mean, and according to their importance included the subjects
of breading management, marketing, calf rising, barn management, and hygiene management respectively. It must also be mentioned that based on the result of analysis, among factors of training subjects, promoting quality of cattle and cattle holding barns, which includes variables such as milking and breast hygiene, feet hygiene, feeding, hygiene in livestock transfer, selection of appropriate beef cattle, quality of feed, promotion of environmental conditions (improving breeding conditions), detection of correct time for mating, and selection of appropriate feed for beef cattle accounted for 40.04 % of the total variance