Perception of Poultry Farmers’ on Effectiveness of Poultry Extension Service Delivery in Calabar Municipal Area of Cross River State, Nigeria

Abstract

The objective of this paper was to analyze poultry farmer’s perception on the effectiveness of poultry extension service delivery in Calabar Municipal Area of Cross River State, Nigeria using appropriate standard methods by selecting 120 registered poultry farmers to obtain Primary data by questionnaire. Result from the study shows that poultry farmers had a mean age of 43 years.  Majority (66%) of the farmers were men and about 86% of them were married. The farmers had a mean household size of 5 persons with majority (68%) of them having tertiary education. On average, the farmers had nine years of farming experience and a mean stock size of 1,175 birds. The result revealed 43% of the farmers had contact with extension agents once in the last one year. Farmers’ perception of the delivery of extension and advisory services revealed that the farmers' perception was favourable and they expressed satisfaction with the delivery of four out of the nine poultry extension services available to them. They include; training on routine operations (4.0), advice on improved breeds of poultry (3.6), training on biosecurity measures (3.5) and training on diseases prevention and cure (3.3). The most important constraints as perceived by the respondents to limit effective extension services delivery among the poultry farmers includes; lack of funding of extension service (81%), inadequate number of extension agents (68%). The study recommends that the government should immediately boost its financing of the ADPs and recruit more extension agents to achieve effective coverage of more farmers.