RURAL DWELLERS INVOLVEMENT IN SMALL SCALE POULTRY FARMING IN OLUYOLE LOCAL GOVERNMENT AREA OF OYO STATE, NIGERIA

Poultry production at all levels appears to be lucrative and profitable but many factors appear to limit the involvement of rural dwellers in this sector. This study was carried out at Oluyole Local Government Area Oyo State to assess the level of involvement of rural dwellers in small scale poultry farming. Some parts of Oluyole local government were purposely selected for this study because of higher concentration of rural dwellers that are involved in poultry production. A total of ninety five respondents were sampled and had a well-structured questionnaire administered to them to determine their socio economics characteristic, their level of involvement, benefit derived and constraint faced in poultry farming. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics of frequency counts, percentage and means, Chisquare and Pearson Product Moment Correlation (PPMC) at 0.05% level of significance. The results show that majority of the respondents were males (61.1%), married (68.8%) and have tertiary education (59.1%). Majority (50.5%) of the respondents were between the ages of 31-45years. Socio-economic characteristics such as age, region, sex, educational level, household size and income had no significant relationship with the respondent’s level of involvement in small scale poultry farming (P<0.05). Results on level of involvement shows that most (48.8%) of the sampled correspondents were involved in boilers production. The study also shows that the benefit derived in poultry farming remained the same regardless of the level of involvement of the farmers in various poultry activities, with r – value (0.177), p-value (0.089) indicating that the relationship is not significant (P<0.01), it also indicated that the relationship between the constraints facing the respondents and their level of involvement is not significant with r – value (0.154). Also, the major constraints facing the respondents included difficulty in accessing loan and quality feed. Government should therefore make loan facilities at affordable interest rate while all the stake holders should work together to improve farmers’ access to quality feed, vaccine, technical know-how and adequate extension workers.


INTRODUCTION
Small scale poultry production is an important agricultural sector usually found in most of the rural communities in Africa and most of them scavenge on available local feed resources. Although smallholder chicken production plays a major role in poverty alleviation and food security at household level. They are usually neglected in the development themes, but nowadays many researchers and development agents are making a strong consensus about their importance and contribution (Oladunni & Fatuase, 2014).
The importance of livestock goes beyond food production (Birthal et al., 2002) it provide draught power and organic manure to crops sector and raw materials for the industrial sector. Livestock sector also make significant contribution towards supplement income from crop production and other sources and absorb financial stress due to crop failure. It generates a continuous stream of income and employment and reduces seasonality in livehood pattern of the rural dwellers (Birthal and Ali, 2005 (Nyagba, 2009). Abah, ( 2010) also attested that rural dwellers have been found engaged in primarily economic activities that form a foundation for the country economic development. Rural areas in developing countries are usually deprived of the basic needs of life such as housing, medical care postal communication education, transport among other things. In recent years, the level of production from small scale to large scale has been observed to be decreasing, therefore the need to examine constraint limiting the level of poultry production. This study was carried out to assess the involvement, ascertain the benefits and constraints of rural dwellers of Oluyole Local Government in small scale poultry farming.

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
The study was carried out in Oluyole Local Government Area of Oyo State. It shares boundary with Ibadan South East, Ibadan South West, Ido and OnaAra Local Government areas within Ibadan Metropolis. In the hinterland, it also boards Ogun state via Obafemi, Owode, Odeda, and Ijebu North Local Government respectively. The target population for the study was rural dwellers in the selected wards of Oluyole local government. There are 10 wards in the local government out of which three were randomly selected from its rural settlements with two villages selected from each of the three wards. Not fewer than thirty small scale poultry farmers were randomly selected from each village to make a total of 95 respondents for the study. Data were collected using a structured questionnaire administered to the respondents while interview was used to get information from the non-literate respondents. However only 93 questionnaires were retrieved. Data collected were analyzed using simple descriptive statistics while the inferential statistical tool was used for the hypothesis. H o 1: Chi square was used H o 2: Pearson product method of correlation (PPMC) was used.  Table 1 shows some of the socio-economic characteristics of the respondents. The results revealed that majority (61.1%) of the respondents were males and married (68.8%). This signifies that married and males are more involve in poultry farming than females. The table also shows that the respondents were well read as not fewer than 59.1% have tertiary education. This will give hope of their ability to access information that can help them to build up their farming enterprise. This agrees with the submission of Oyelami et al.,

Result and Discussion
The result in figure 1 shows that majority (50.5%) was between the ages of 31-45years and only 3.2% of the respondents were above 60years of age. This shows that respondents involve in the poultry farming in the study area are in their active ages when the strength as well as energy to work is readily available. This corroborates the findings of past studies (Adisa and Akinkunmi, 2012;Gingras et al., 2008, Okeke et al., 2018 Oyelami and Ajanaku 2019) who reported that younger people are more involved in livestock farming than aged people. This implies that the younger the farmers the better the productivity.  Table 2 shows the respondents level of involvement in poultry farming. The results show that majority (68.8%) of the respondents were involved in disease management while majority (48.8%) of the respondents were highly involved in broilers production. This may be so due to the fact that broilers are fast moving poultry product in the study area. This finding agrees with Oladunni and Fatuase (2014) who reported that most of their respondents in a similar research kept broilers but disagrees with that of Adisa and Akinkunmi (2012) in their study on women involvement in poultry production in Oyo State that shows that most of the respondents involved in keeping layer. Since most of the respondents were reported to be male this may imply that men may prefer poultry aspect that brings quick profits at short interval to meet their family needs.   Table 3 shows the constraints facing the respondents on small scale farming in the study area. Among the constraints considered high cost of feed was the major constraint faced by the majority (74.2%) of the respondents followed by inadequate loan facility (65.6).
Waste management was however considered as not a constraint by the majority (77.4%). This is possibly because feed constitutes the most expensive aspect of poultry production. This is in line with earlier reports (Okeke et al., 2018, Oyelami andAjanaku, 2019) that finance is one of the major constraints of livestock farmers in the rural area.  Table 4: The result shows that the majority (82.8%) of the respondents strongly agrees that poultry serves as source of income, 76.3% strongly agrees it is a source of meat, 62.4% strongly agrees that poultry is a source of food, 48.4% strongly agrees that poultry is a source of employment, Not fewer than 97.8% of the respondents agrees that they derived job satisfaction in poultry farming.  Table 5 shows no significant relationship between the socioeconomic characteristics (age, sex, education level, household size, monthly income) of the respondents and their level of involvement in small scale-poultry farming. The results of hypothesis showed non-significant (p>0.05) relationship between age (x2=8. 116, p=0.230), gender (x2=1.953, p=0.744), education level (x2=9.618, p=0.142), household size (x2=7.199, p=0.303) and income sources (x2=12.150, p=0.434). This implies that age, education level, sex, household size and income sources had no influence on the level of involvement of rural dwellers in small scale production. This report is however contrary to the submission of Oyelami and Ajanaku (2019) the reported significant relationship between selected socio economic characteristics and respondents' involvement in livestock farming. The table above shows that there is no significant relationship between benefits and level of involvement (r=0.177, p=0.089). However, this relationship is a positive relationship which implies that whether they are involved in poultry farming or not the benefits that can be obtained from poultry farming remains the same.  Table 7 shows that there is no significant relationship, (r= -0.149, p=0.154) between constraints faced in poultry farming by the respondents and their level of involvement. However, the relationship is negative which implies that through the relationship is not significant, the greater level of involvement the lower the constraint faced by the respondent. This differs from the submission of Oyelami and Ajanaku (2019) that observed significant relationship between constraints and involvement of the youth in livestock farming. This may occur as the result of the aspect of livestock been considered (poultry) which is the most prominent among the livestock farming in most of the communities.

CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS
Based on the findings of this study, the following conclusions were drawn: the socio-economic characteristics of the respondents doesn't affect the level of involvement of respondents in the study area but the benefit derived in poultry farming remains the same regardless of the level of their involvement. However, the more the respondents that were involve in poultry farming the lower the constraints the farmers are likely going to faced which is indicated by a negative rvalue. Also one of the major constraints facing the respondents is difficulty in loan procurement which has been hindering the growth and advancement of small scale poultry faming in the area under study and this may one of the reasons why fewer individuals were involved in poultry activities. Poultry rearing makes an important contribution to livelihood and this can increase the total level of meat and protein production if farmers are empowered. Based on the findings of this study it is obvious that Government needs to make loan facilities at a single digit interest rate available to the small scale poultry farmers in the study area. Moreover, all the stake holders should work together improve farmers' access to quality feed, vaccine, technical know-how and adequate extension workers as this will improve their involvement and output in poultry farming.