For thousands of years, the camels were the main working pack animals in the nomadic pastoralist economy of Kazakh ancestors. Later in the 19-20th centuries, with the expansion of the network of dirt roads, camels were successfully used as draft animals, which caused spread of these animals beyond their natural habitat to the southern provinces of Russia.
The number of camels in Kazakhstan in 1927, in the Soviet period, has reached its maximum 1.69 million. With the development of mechanized transport, the value of camels as draft animals fell, at the same time the demand for camel specific products, such as milk, meat, wool, leather, was limited. Great damage to agriculture was caused by ill-conceived socio-economic reforms in the 1930s, which led to catastrophic camel population decline. Later, the number of camels slightly increased and stabilized, the level of selection and breeding work and the proportion of purebred animals have increased. Ever since Kazakhstan gained independence the total number of camels has been increasing gradually in the area of their natural habitat, which is associated with high profitability of camel breeding in deserts and semi-deserts of the south-western regions of Kazakhstan. Productive camel breeding allows involving these lands and its people in economically profitable production. Improvement of breed and productive qualities of camel is very important in the country.
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