Women goat farmers in the rural areas of Ogun State: Challenge for extension agents and researchers

Abstract

Small scale goat farming is female dominated in the rural areas of Ogun state, Nigeria. These women goat farmers need to be motivated and empowered to adopt strategies that will shift them from the usual traditional ways and practices into modern livelihood strategies and practices. This study, therefore tries to assess the knowledge of the women goat farmers that live in Ilaro and Abeokuta zones of Ogun state about all the possible useful products that could be derived from goats and to what extent these potentials are utilized. The findings were that the goat farmers in the rural areas of Ilaro and Abeokuta were predominantly (66.7 %) aged women in the age range of 51 to 95 years. While the younger ones of ages 36 – 50 years are few (21.5 %). They are mostly married (49.2 %) with an average household size of 6 – 10 persons. 78.5 % of the women have long standing experience of between 31-50 years in goat rearing. Their level of awareness is very high when it comes to goats being used as source of protein (68.3 %), as a means of weed control (77.4%), but very poor or low awareness when it comes to the potential for medicinal and industrial uses of goat products. For example, they are poorly aware of goats’ products like milk being converted to modified form that can be used as anti-allergy to cow milk in children (46.2 %), the use of parts of its intestine for making catgut or paper by 18.5 % of them etc. It was also found that goat farmers in this study area have little knowledge and information on the potentials inherent in goat animals. For this reason the goat products are never utilized for modern uses such as butter, cheese, cream making, treatment of ulcer, tuberculosis etc as shown by 97.5 – 99 % of them. Significant relationship was found to exist between the goat farmers’ direct utilization of the goats products (r = 0.251, p=0.003), utilization of goat products for medicinal / medical purposes (r = 0.248, p=0.002) and usage in product forms (r= 0.303, p=0.000) and the farmers’ level of awareness. Recommendations were made that the intervention of researchers and particularly extension agents to goat farmers is very crucial.

Key words: Women goat farmers, goat products, untapped goat resources, extension service.