question_answer 9)

What is meant by the following terms? (a) Rearing (b) Shearing (c) Sericulture

Answer:

(a) Rearing It is taking care of livestock (e.g. goats, cows, sheep, etc) for commercial purpose by taking them out in herds for grazing, feeding them on a mixture of pulses. Corn, jawar, oil cakes (material left after taking out oil from seeds) and minerals for better growth and yield of produce like meat, milk, wool. Beside this in extreme climate conditions like winter, these are also provided shelter and fed on leaves, grain and dry fodder. (b) Shearing It is the process in which fleece (hair) of the sheep along a thin layer of skin is removed from its body. Machines similar to those used by barbers are used to shave off hair. Generally, the hair are removed during the hot weather which enables the sheep to survive without-their protective coat of hair. Shearing does not hurt the sheep as the uppermost layer of the skin is dead. (c) Sericulture Sericulture or silk farming is the rearing of silkworms for the production of raw silk. For obtaining silk, silkworm moths are reared and their cocoons are collected to get silk threads. Silk yarns come from the cocoon of the silkworm. The caterpillar hatches from a very small egg and is an eating machine. When the silkworms start its spinning process in the cocoon, the worm's head is coated with a gummy protein called sericin. The silkworm rotates its body thousands of times producing one continuous strand of silk of length of 12 football fields. The silk adheres to itself forming the cocoon.