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ABSTRACT
The study assessed Farmers’ access and usage of information on modern poultry management practices in Ovia North-East LGA, Benin-city, Edo state, Nigeria. Two stage sampling procedure was used to select 100 poultry farmers whose data were collected using Google forms and printed structured questionnaire. The findings revealed that 70% of the poultry farmers were female with the age of 41-50 (44%) being the largest in the data set, which indicates that farming in the study area was dominated by young people who are active and within the productive age group. 84% of the total population were married, 53% of the poultry farmers sampled had a household size of 5 or less, 58% of the population had tertiary education, 55% of the population had a farm experience of 5years or less, 67% of the population had farm incomes of ₦360,000 or less and 50% of the population are members of poultry farming associations. Results from the field survey showed that 89% of the poultry farmers got their source of information from fellow farmers which was the highest source in the data collected. Televisions, Local government and Government agricultural agencies were the least sources of information with 3% each. Data collected showed that routine cleaning/disinfection of feeding material had the highest awareness level (97%), Access (Mean 2.80), and Usage (Mean 4.77) amongst the various management practices. Use of foot-dip had the lowest awareness level (61%), Access (Mean 1.81), and Usage (Mean 2.75) amongst the various management practices. It also revealed that poultry farmers perceived routine cleaning (mean 4.47) and vaccination (mean 4.55) to be the most effective practices in managing their poultry. Lack of support from the government was discovered to be the most serious challenge of poultry farmers in the study area, while Language barriers was the least serious challenge. Farm Experience and Income are the variables that have positively significant relationship with Farmers’ access to information. Age had a positive significant relationship with Farmers’ usage to information, while Farm income had a significantly negative relationship with usage of information. In conclusion, for easy access and effective utilization of agricultural information, Government can provide more xi support in the development of the poultry sector through investing in extension officers for effective dissemination of information and training.
