Abstract            Volume:6  Issue-9  Year-2018         Original Research Articles

Online ISSN : 2347 - 3215 Issues : 12 per year Publisher : Excellent Publishers Email : editorijcret@gmail.com

The paper examines capacity building of livestock extension staff as a strategy for the improvement of livestock farming/animal agriculture in Imo state, Nigeria. A total of 120 livestock extension staff from the Livestock Unit of the Ministry of Agriculture and Natural Resources was used for the study. Questionnaire was used to elicit information and percentages, mean and standard deviation were used for analysis. Results showed that the reasons for capacity includes - to build the capacity of rural livestock farmers (M = 2.65), provision of livestock services (M = 2.53), improve productivity/quality of livestock product (M = 2.77) to satisfy/meet market demand (M = 2.97) among others. The following methods of capacity building exists – workshop training (100%), mentoring (95.8%), brainstorming sessions (82.8%) etc. The following core areas of training for livestock extension staff were general farm management (M = 3.05), animal health management and hygiene (M = 3.31), veterinary medicines and biologicals (M = 3.42), animal feeding and watering (M = 3.33), environmental and infrastructure (M=3.07), animal and products handling (M=3.42).

Download this article as