Technical Skills Required by Youths for Goat Production in Ebonyi State

Abstract

The study focused on identifying the technical skills required by youths for goat production in Ebonyi State. The area of the study was Ebonyi State and a survey research design was adopted. Four research questions were answered and 4 hypotheses were tested for the study. The population of the study is 232 consisting of 129 goat farmers and 103 extension agents in the State. There was no sampling because the total population was accessible and manageable. The whole population was therefore used for the study. The instrument used for data collection was a structured questionnaire containing 69 items. The instrument was validated by 3 experts, test-retest method of reliability and Pearson product-moment correlation was used to obtain a reliability index of 0.82. The data collected were analyzed using mean and standard deviation while the t-test was used to test the null hypotheses. The result of the study revealed that the technical skills required by youths for goat production are 15 skills in planning, 13 skills in site preparation and housing, 28 skills in breeding and management, and 14 skills in marketing the goat produced. Among the recommendations made were that youths should return to the farm and utilize their physical agility in goat production and that government should provide an enabling environment for youths to embark on goat production by providing soft loans or grants and establishing skill acquisition centers where youths can acquire the identified goat production skills.