सिंहदरबार संवाददाता
Myagdi. 72-year-old Ran Bahadur Bik of Khungkhani, Tamankhola Rural Municipality-5, Baglung, who has been raising sheep since tradition, has been reducing the number of sheep and goats.
Bik, who was met in the last week of last Shrawan at Buki Patan in Garpachhoda of the Dhorpatan Hunting Reserve spread across East Rukum, Baglung and Myagdi, informed that he plans to sell the sheep shed he has been raising for 32 years.
‘Earlier, along with one hundred sheep and goats, he used to sell eight or ten cattle and buffalo sheds. The cattle and buffaloes were sold. There are 40 sheep and goats,’ he said. ‘My children did not choose this profession. They went abroad. As I grow older, I am starting to feel tired and unable to walk, so I am also planning to sell my sheep and goats and take a break.
74-year-old Laxhuman Thapa of Dhorpatan is also preparing to give his buffaloes to his children and not to go on a business trip from next year. “After our children went abroad and settled down, we old people are now tending the cattle sheds of the people who used to keep the cattle,” he said. “The custom of keeping cattle in mobile barns is disappearing with our generation.” Thapa said that the barns of Dhorpatan, including Garpacheda, Dahakharka, Tikadhuri, which used to be filled with cattle, sheep, goats and horses during the rainy season 15-20 years ago, are now empty.
The mobile barns maintained by elderly people in their 60s, like Ran Bahadur of Khungkhani and Lachuman Thapa of Dhorpatan, are decreasing with their increasing age. Young and old shepherds are not found.
Bishnu Bahadur Thapa, former head of Takam, Dhawalagiri Rural Municipality-7, who lives in Chentung, Dhorpatan, said that due to the attraction to foreign employment, the feeling that one should work hard in one’s own country, and the lack of a good source of income along with earning a living, the nomadic livestock farming profession is in crisis.
According to 83-year-old Thapa, people from Dharapani, Takam, Muna, Mudi, and Lulang have stopped taking their cattle to Buki during the rainy season for a few years now. As the heat increases, it is customary to take animals to Buki to graze on the nutritious grass of the herbaceous pastures of the Himalayan region. Thapa said that animals grazing in Buki are healthy, fat, give more milk and the meat is delicious.
From Asar to Bhadau, it is customary to move the cattle sheds in the Lekali region to the Beshi area with the cold. The new generation has considered it a pain and a hassle to live in Buki with the animals, without contact with their families for months. Shakti Bahadur Kayat of Dhorpatan, who returned after working in Saudi Arabia for five years and continued his ancestral profession of herding cattle, shared his experience that it is better to have a cowshed than abroad because no matter where he goes, he cannot earn without suffering.
‘Sadness: How much more so abroad than here?’ he said. ‘I find it easier to raise buffaloes in Buki than in the Gulf.’ Shakti Bahadur, who raises 21 buffaloes, said that he sells ghee, raga buffaloes, and chhurpi to educate his six children and meet the household expenses.
प्रतिक्रिया दिनुहोस्