Date of Award:

5-1970

Document Type:

Thesis

Degree Name:

Master of Science (MS)

Department:

Applied Economics

Department name when degree awarded

Agricultural Economics

Committee Chair(s)

E. Boyd Wennergren

Committee

E. Boyd Wennergren

Committee

Roice H. Anderson

Committee

Darwin B. Nielsen

Abstract

A study was undertaken to evaluate the general sheep marketing process in Bolivia, to determine the present economic structure of farm units belonging to Altiplano sheep producers, to analyze the economics of marketing Altiplano sheep at an earlier age, and to analyze the economics of using various local products as a supplemental sheep feed in Bolivia.

In general the Bolivian sheep marketing process is inadequate and inefficient because of lack of marketing information, poor producer-buyer contact, lack of commercial sheep transportation, slaughterhouses lacking in facilities and hygienic conditions, and apparently unattractive retail methods.

By selling their relatively unproductive male sheep before they are one year old and replacing them with ewes and yearling ewes, the results of the study indicate that the "criollo" and semi-improved sheep producers could increase the return to their sheep enterprise by 43 percent and 10 percent, respectively, and that they could increase the value of sheep available for sale or trade by 67 per cent and 13 percent, respectively.

To help determine the economics of feeding sheep a supplemental ration in Bolivia, a sheep feeding experiment was designed to test three breed-types of sheep, and two roughage-to-concentrate ratios. Two hundred and thirty-five lambs were fed for 63 days. The results of the study indicate that fattening lambs commercially in Bolivia is potentially profitable.

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