KARACHI: Before letting your imagination run wild with recipes, spices, barbecues and skewers after bringing home your goat, lamb, cow, bull or camel, think first about what you are going to feed them during their brief stay with you. These days there are several roadside shops selling a variety of feed for livestock to help you in that department.

A chaff cutter stands in one corner of the shop. It is used for cutting straw or maize stalks into small pieces for cows and bulls to chew on easily. A little goat brought to the shop by its owner turns away from the straw and maize, as it is more interested in the grass-like fresh green leaves, known as jantar, which its owner quickly bought for Rs15 per kilogramme.

The shop owner, Mohammad Naveed, smiles and says: “Yes, we get plenty of sacrificial animal owners bringing in the animal to select food for itself as they are not really sure as to what to feed them.

“These animals are all herbivores i.e. strictly vegetarian. You may allow them to graze on your lawn, feed them grass or vegetable leaves such as spinach leaves but that doesn’t mean they can be fed anything besides meat that you may have to offer them at home. For instance, your goat cannot easily digest cooked roti or naan. And if you think you are helping it by giving it water to easily wash down that roti, it will result in indigestion instead. Then the goat’s stomach will swell and it will most probably die,” explains the fodder shop owner.

Many shops have packed one-kilo bags of dried wheat, barley and oats glume or dried outer shells of pulses and lentils. The bags are usually plastic bags, which the buyers better remove and throw away to keep it out of the reach of the animal as it may choke them to death. “Sometimes it happens that you keep a bag full of such feed near your goat that may decide to help itself by tearing up the bag while also swallowing pieces of it,” Shakir Ali, another shopkeeper warns.

“To save money, some folks get a small sacrificial animal and then buy lots and lots of feed to make them eat more so that they grow bigger. It doesn’t work that way if you buy an animal just a week or a few days before Eid. Overfeeding, too, may kill it. This may only work if you got an animal months ahead, not days,” he added.

The feed is brought to Bakra Peeri from Thatta, Sujawal and also from Sakran in Balochistan. “We pick up our supply in bulk from Bakra Peeri. Mostly we pick fresh, green leaves, be they maize or jantar, because the goats and other animals that have been brought to the city have also been brought up on green stuff,” says Jamil Khan.

“Grain at Rs45 to Rs50 a kilogramme is expensive if compared to the greens and people who buy an animal for thousands of rupees do not spend much on feeding them expensive stuff. Their justification lies in the thinking that they are not looking for feed to get strong teeth and bones for the animal,” he laughingly adds. “But they should be feeding them grain as well to make the diet balanced,” he argues.

Published in Dawn September 23rd, 2015

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