Livestock

Livestock farming is a key component of Nepalese agriculture (GDP ). Nepal has 72 million cattle (2014,FAO, Animal Production and Health Division) which is 0.49% of World cattle population but still growth rate is below 0%. Small ruminants for meat equivalent to Rs.34 million imported (DCFTS, 1988) which contributes 22% of meat supply to Nepalese market. Currently, 51.5 kg of milk is available per capita per year in Nepal which is still far below the WHO recommended 91.25 kg level. This data is enough to support that there is need to increase productivity of both milk and meat.

Our project aims to develop a simple and reliable kit that can detect status of pregnancy in cattle within the first month. This will help Nepalese farmers save time and money for next breeding and replacement decisions. This kit provides comparative advantage not only over traditional morphological detection method which takes normally 6 months but also to the rectal palpation method (detected only after 3months) used by vet doctors. This will reduce Veterinary services (detection by Rectal palpation and process artificial insemination) and import of International ELISA kit for pregnancy detection which is very costly ($5-10 per test). We are trying to develop strip based pregnancy kit which will be an easy and convenient alternative to routine palpation and ultrasound method. Farmers will be able to use our kit on their own to know status of pregnancy without help of any technical experts.