Knowledge of broiler farmers about scientific housing practices

摘要

In India, besides large commercial poultry firms, farmers have also taken up poultry farming as an enterprise especially over the last few years. The present article details a study conducted in Haryana to focus on knowledge level of broiler farmers about scientific housing practices. The study was conducted on 125 broiler farmers selected randomly from all the five districts of Hisar division. The extent of knowledge possessed by the respondent at the time of the interview was measured using a set of questions specifically prepared. The study revealed that majority of large farmers had high knowledge while majority of small farmers had low knowledge and medium farmers had low to high knowledge. The factors such as age, farming experience, diversityof occupation, mass media exposure, sources of information, risk orientation and economic motivation, etc had varying degrees of influence on the knowledge level of different categories of farmers. Apparently the peer to peer information sharing was strong amongst these broiler farmers. Strong association between size of enterprise and level of knowledge was observed. However, there is a need to conduct focused study on issues like information seeking and communication behaviour of broiler farmers.