Sefali sarkar lives with her family in the Nirmal Basu Para village of district Dahlai. Her husband is a farmer and the income earned from farming is the only enough to meet the daily expenses of the family of four. Sefali wanted to come out of this constant worry of having to live hand to mouth. As a result, she started goat rearing in 1994 with one goat. The income from goat rearing remained stagnant for a long period of time as there was hardly any improved management practice involved in raising goats. When in 2016, Tripura Rural Livelihood Mission started a project on goat based livelihoods, she attended workshops of Bakri Palak Pathshaala. There she learned about goat rearing with improved management practices. The training program also made her to understand importance of breeding buck for breed improvement and productivity. She also consulted Pashu sakhi who is known as ‘didi’ locally of how increase goat productivity with limited resources at hand. She also made Sefali aware of low cost improved management practices which supports in enhancing productivity. Pashu Sakhi made her aware about the need for feeding concentrate goat especially pregnant goats and kids. The role of deworming and vaccination in reducing mortality and increasing productivity of goats was also explained. Community trainings that she attended increased her confidence and she gradually increased herd size of goats. She regularly started buying dana mishran, pashu chat, masala bolus & other essential feed from Pashu Sakhi. She started deworming and vaccinating her goats in a timely manner. Sefali now has a total of 15 goats. Her yearly income from selling of goats is around Rs. 33,000 She also started buck entrepreneurship in the year 2017 from which she has earned close to Rs 5500 till now. Her family now is better equipped to deal with financial woes while both her sons study at a college. Sefali feels that goat based livelihood not just improved the economic condition of her family but also raised her confidence to tackle other problems in life. The lifelong lessons she speaks of is to better manage resources to get better returns as in the case of goats she started with the help of The Goat Trust.
