"I couldn't look after my cattle because of the winter. I had a great interest in it but I couldn't do it," Naqvi said over a cup of tea outside his wrecked farmhouse, about 10 km (six miles) east of the devastated city of Muzaffarabad.

Naqvi is like many other farmers in the earthquake zone.

With their homes and barns in ruins and winter fast approaching, many fear they won't be able to keep alive the animals that survived the Oct. 8 quake after the snow comes, so they're slaughtering and selling them.

But agriculture and health officials say farm animals are vital for the mountain people of northern Pakistan -- for both their health and economic well being -- and the animal survivors of the quake must be kept alive.

"We're very frightened when farmers begin selling their assets. What happens next year?" said Keith Ursel of the UN World Food Programme, which is helping to feed about one million human survivors of the quake.

The earthquake killed more than 73,000 people, most of them in mountain villages and hamlets in the Pakistani Himalayas.

More than 250,000 farm animals -- the source of milk, yoghurt and butter -- also perished, many killed when their dry-stone and concrete barns caved in, a livestock official said.

Animals grazing when the quake struck were killed in landslides, some were swept to their death in rivers. The disaster zone has been littered with decomposing cattle.

Aid officials, racing to get shelter and food to mountain communities before winter sets in, fear a second wave of death if sickness sweeps through a malnourished and traumatised population.

Animals provide an essential part of the people's diet but milk production has fallen off dramatically, partly because so many animals were killed but also because many of the animals that survived have been neglected since the quake.

Many farmers have been selling animals to traders from the plains. Naqvi said he had sold his cows and buffaloes for less than half the usual price.

"LIVESTOCK IS EVERYTHING"

The loss of the animals and their dairy products is a big worry.

"It's their only source of fresh and storable protein," said Ursel. There would be a higher rate of mortality among survivors if they did not get a proper diet, he said.

But as well as a vital part of people's diet, animals are the only way most rural people have of making money.

"Livestock is everything for them, as their accounts, as their cash. It is the only source of income for the rural community and there's no alternative," said Ghulam Shakoor Kiyani, director general of animal husbandry in Pakistani Kashmir.

"More than 500,000 large animals are still existing, they need help for survival. The first thing is shelter because most of the area will be covered by snow," he said.

After shelter, animals need fodder, including concentrated feed. But farmers also need help if they are to help their animals, said Kiyani.

"If they come to know that shelters will go to them, feed will go to them, some relief will be provided, certainly they will not sell their animals at cheap rates," he said.

One group trying to help is the British animal welfare organisation the Brooke Hospital for Animals.

It has set up an animal hospital in the small town of Ghari Dupatta, in the Jhelum Valley to the southeast of Muzaffarabad, and is helping farmers in 15 surrounding villages with shelter, food and vaccinations for their animals.

"Mostly the animals are suffering from pneumonia, bronchitis, and they're too weak," said former Pakistani army veterinary officer Qadeer Ahmed, working at the hospital.

Many animals are weak because they starved after the quake, their owners dead, in mourning or too traumatised to cope.

"The owners were not in a fit condition, there was nobody to look after them and they remained without food," Ahmed said.

Ahmed and his team are treating about 1,000 animals a day. Farmers, knowing help was at hand, had stopped getting rid of their animals since his team began their work, he said.

"They are not selling, they have stopped it," he said.

Animals have been part of the way of life in the mountains for generations and stocks had to be restored, Kiyani said.