Pig Production System of Ethnic Group in Ratanakiri

Ratanakiri is located in the northeast part of Cambodia, has annual temperature in the range from 22-34 ˚C and average precipitation of 2200 millimeters. The density of population was very low only 17/km2 and about 70% of them living in the upland area where they applied subsistence agriculture farming. This study was sampled 3 districts, 3 communes, 9 villages with totally respondents of 126 in Ratanakiri to investigate the small-scale pigs' production of ethnic people by mainly focusing on the local breeds and available feed resources. As a result of the survey, all the interviewed farmers were interested in local breeds and freely scavenging production system without any tied up and housing, the pigs were fed with local possible resources such as cooked banana stalk or taro and broken rice, mixing with rice bran and sometime only cooked broken rice and rice bran. It was noted that, the feed was done only one time per day in the morning. Breeding and vaccination/deworming program were not completely applied in the sampled targets which led low production and easier to infect any seasonal diseases and high mortality rate because the technical extension service from provincial department of agriculture was not done broadly and local animal medicine shops was far away and village animal health service (VAHS) were also difficult to access. The pigs' production by ethic people in the targeted areas was actually not economical and profitable as all of them practiced the scavenging system with poor management and malnutritional and inadequate feed supply. These would lead longer production period and higher mortality rate. The main purpose of the production was just to dedicate to the religious symbols they believed on, especially when they infected serious diseases or got a fever and for traditional ceremony.