AN ASSESSMENT OF COMMUNICATION CHANNELS UTILIZED BY POULTRY FARMERS TO ACCESS INFORMATION ON RAISING VILLAGE CHICKENS INBAUCHI STATE, NIGERIA

摘要

An assessment of communication channels utilized by farmers to access information on raising village chickens was conducted using an open ended questionnaire among 72 farmers drawn from nine communities in Bauchi State. All the participants were selected based on their ownership of more than 20 chickens and interest in participation in the proposed study during a focus group discussion held among village chicken farmers, poultry traders and community leaders in each of the nine participating communities.The demographic characteristics of respondents revealed that most of them, 47/72 (65.3%) were solely farmers who were mostly females, 40/72 (55.6%) of over 20 years of age (77.8%) and married or widowed, 71/72 (98.6%).The majority of these respondents had received some formal education, 37/72 (51.4%) and had over 5 years of experience in raising village chickens, 55/72 (77.8%). A combination of Radio and community knowledge were identified by most respondents (32%) as their major sources of information on village chicken production. Radio (29%) was the second and the single most important channel of information while school, was the least reported source of agricultural information (3%). The study highlighted the need to add and network more channels of information to effectively reach farmers with information that will lead to improvements in village chicken production.