The frequent occurrence of flood disaster causes damages to human as well animal life leading to heavy economic loss, which forced the Government organizations to formulate suitable mitigation measures. In spite of its recommendations, loss to life of animals and economy continues to occur every year due to poor implementation of mitigation measures. The present study was conducted with the objective of assessing the level of adoption of flood mitigation strategies of livestock farmers during flood disaster. For this study, the data on long-term and short-term mitigation strategies adopted by livestock farmers was collected from 600 livestock farmers residing in different flood prone zones of Cuddalore District, Tamil Nadu, by using an interview schedule. The survey revealed that only small number of farmers in the study area adopted the short-term general management practices like moving animals to raised platform (15.16%), moving animals to community shelter (13.50%), moving animals inside residential house (20.30%) and moving animals to friend’s/relatives’ safe shelter (5.00%). The short- term feeding management practices like keeping feed and fodder in safe area such as under the roof, receiving feed and fodder as relief material from Government bodies/NGOs/Volunteers, borrowing feed and fodder from friends/relatives and bulk purchase of feed and sharing were adopted by only less number of respondents (9.20, 17.00, 4.66 and 3.16% respectively). Majority of the farmers in the study area adopted long-term general management practices like getting coverage of animals under insurance schemes (56.30%) and rearing indigenous breeds (53.50%). Although many farmers adopted the long-term general management practices like keeping dry fodder in preserved haylage (65.66%) and feeding un conventional feeds to animals (89.17%), other practices like constructing feed and fodder storage (17.80%), keeping green fodder in preserved silage form (8.34%) and growing flood-tolerant fodder varieties (12.64%) were poorly adopted by them. In conclusion, scientific interventions like capacity building programmes for farmers to improve the adoption rates and construction of multipurpose evacuation shelters in elevated areas are required as mitigation strategies.

Management of livestock, Disaster, Feeding Management, Flood.

In conclusion, it was found that, the farmers need to be enlightened on the flood disaster mitigation strategies, in terms of construction of shed in elevated place, mobilization of animals to elevated and safe place and proper storage of feed and fodder. Many scientific Silambarasan et al., Biological Forum – An International Journal 14(2a): 420-424(2022) 424 mitigation practices are not fully adopted by the farmers of the study area, indicating the need for capacity building of farmers to face the disasters logically with scientific methods. It was also found that, the available multipurpose evacuation shelters are located in lowlying area making unfit to use for animal mobilization and hence suitable sites need to be identified in elevated locations and steps may be initiated to construct community animal shelter with the assistance of District disaster management.

: P. Silambarasan, Thanga.Thamil Vanan, N. Kumaravel, R. Richard Churchil, N. Vengadabady and N. Vimal Rajkumar (2022). Level of Adoption of Flood Disaster Mitigation Strategies by Livestock Farmers during Flood Disaster in Cuddalore District of Tamil Nadu. Biological Forum – An International Journal, 14(2a): 420-424.