ABSTRACT

The study was carried to identify entrepreneurial skills required by broiler farmers for broiler production in lkwuano Local Government area of Abia State. Survey research design was adopted. Five research questions were developed· in : Conformity with the purpose of the study. Five null hypotheses were also formulated and tested at the probability of 0.05 level of significance and 98 degreeof freedom ( d-f). The population of the study was 102 • made up of 80. production . staff of 20 registered commercial poultry farms and all the. 22 Agricultural Extension Agents in the area of study. All the 102 were used for the study since the • number were not much therefore, there was no sampling. A structured questionnaire was developed from literature reviewed, as well as visits to commercial poultry farms and use for data collection. Three experts validated the instrument, two from Agricultural Education Department and one from Animal Production Department all from Michael Okpara University of Agriculture, Umudike. The reliability of the instrument was conducted using test retest technique. The reliability coefficient was computed using the Pearson product moment correlation. The data collected were analyzed using mean and standard deviation to ensure the research questions and t-test statistics for testing the null hypotheses. The findings from the study indicated that 43 entrepreneurial skills were identified as required for commercial broiler production, 11 in planning of broiler production, 10 in brooding of day old chicks, 7 in rearing of broiler to market weight, 7 in broiler processing and 8 in broiler marketing: The result of the hypotheses tested showed that there was no significant difference in the mean ratings of the responses of the broiler farmer and Agricultural Extension Agents on · entrepreneurial · skills required for broiler production in lkwuano Local Government Area of Abia State. It was recommended that the skills identified by · the study should be integrated into skill acquisition centre(s) in Ikwuano L.G.A for training the youths.