Livestock Population in Punjab: Factors Determining Growth, Composition and Density Subash S.P., Kaur Parminder Department of Economics and Sociology, Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana-141 004 The paper is drawn from M.Sc. Thesis of the first author JEL Classification: Rll, R12 Online published on 16 September, 2014. Abstract The paper examined the growth, composition and density of livestock population in Punjab and factors determining them. The results showed that the growth of livestock population has decelerated over the period. The declining stock was replaced with high quality stack since output is increasing over the period. The study also brought out that amongst the zones, zone-II had the highest number of bovine stock while the stock of ovines was found highest in zone-II. The composition of the livestock population was favouring bovines in general and buffalo in particular. The density of livestock population found to be declining since 1990s and reached to 146.25 per sq. km in 2007 from 148.25 per sq. km in 1966. The spatial analysis across the zones revealed, no regional variations among the livestock species. Institutional infrastructure such as veterinary hospitals and permanent dispensaries were the major factors influencing the livestock population growth. Cropping intensity, farming population, density of human population were the factors found to be significantly determining the composition of livestock population. Similar factors together with rural population were found to be the major determinants of density of livestock population. Top Keywords Livestock population, growth, composition, density, determinants. Top |