Perspective of agricultural extension in livestock production in Kaduna state

Abstract

The study was conducted to ascertain the perspective of extension in livestock production in Makarfi, Ikara and Kudan Local Government Areas of Kaduna State. Purposive sampling was used to select wards, multi–stage sampling was adopted to choose villages and simple random sampling to pick 240 responding farmers. Majority of the producers were between 21-40 years of age, literate, married with the mean years of experience of 12 years and mostly non-members of cooperative societies. The main source of extension services was the private sector and the services rendered were educational, health, technical, management and marketing. The extension communication methods used were visits, demonstration, workshop, training and excursion. The benefits of extension services were introduction of livestock species, marketing information, feed and feed ingredient supply, disease and pest control, and liaison services. Constraints to the use of extension services in livestock production were insufficient fund, ineffective research extension linkage, poor veterinary services, shortage of feed and grazing land and the attitude of the producers towards extension services.

Keywords: Agricultural extension, Livestock, Production, Purposive sampling