ASSESSMENT OF POULTRY PRODUCTS’ UTILIZATION PATTERNS AMONG RURAL HOUSEHOLDS IN ONDO STATE, NIGERIA

Abstract

A study was conducted to assess the utilization patterns of poultry products among the rural households in Ondo State. The specific objectives of the study include; examining the socio-economic characteristics of the household members in the areas such as age, sex, marital status, household head, household size, tribe, educational status, religion and occupation, determining the utilization patterns of poultry products in the study areas, identifying the factors affecting the utilization patterns of poultry products in the study areas and determining the households perception of poultry products utilization in the study areas. Primary data were collected with the aid of interview schedule. It was administered on one hundred and twenty respondents. There was selection of two local government areas prominent in poultry products utilization in Ondo-State. The data collected were analyzed using descriptive statistics including means, percentages and frequencies and inferential statistics such as chi-square. Result of the socio-economic characteristics revealed that majority ( 71.6%) of the respondents were above 26 years of age. The mean age was 42 years. The mean household size was six persons. The result further revealed that 31.7% had primary education and 21.7% had no formal education. The result obtained also revealed that 20% of the respondents were traders, 16.7% were artisans, 37.5% were farmers, 10% were self employed. In the study of the frequency of the utilization of poultry products, 99.2% of the respondents utilized fowl, 93.3% utilized turkey, 65.8% utilized, duck, 18.3% utilized pigeon and guinea fowl 71.7% of the respondents. About 97.5% of the respondents utilized poultry meat, 98.3% utilized egg, 33.3% utilized feathers and 26.7% utilized poultry dung. The factors affecting the utilization of poultry products include, high cost poultry products (80.8%) of the respondents, and poor storage facilities of about 7.5% of the respondents. Also, inadequate capital of about 47.5% of the respondents, disease outbreak of about 82.5% of the respondents and environmental factors of about 48.3% of the total respondents. About (87.5%) of the respondents experience no problem in utilizing poultry products. The respondents that utilized egg, meat, feather, viscera and poultry dung have the mean values 4.116, 4.098, 1.358, 1.383 and 1.40 respectively and the grand mean was 2.471. The respondents have good perception towards the utilization of poultry meat and egg. The result of the Chi-square analysis revealed that marital status, x2cal = 0.026, p–value = 0.987, tribe x2cal = 2.666, p –value = 0.849, educational status x2cal = 2.176, p-value = 0.703, religion x2cal = 0.191, p-value = 0.909, household size x2cal = 1.319, p-value = 0.005, occupational status, x2cal = 4.034, p-value = 0.020.There is no significant relationship between the socio-economic characteristics of the households and the utilization patterns of the poultry products. Also, there is significant relationship between the perception of the households and utilization patterns of poultry products. It is recommended that Government should help the rural people to guide against disease outbreak by supplying vaccines and poultry drugs in subsidy to the rural people that embark on poultry production. The rural people should be enlightened the more on the uses of poultry dung, feathers and visceral. Aged people should consider egg supportive to their health.