Adoption of improved fish hatchery production technologies by fish hatchery managers in Oyo state, Nigeria

Abstract

This study sought to assess the adoption of improved fish hatchery production technologies and information usage by fish hatchery farmers in Oyo State, Nigeria. Multistage sampling technique was used to select 234 hatchery farmers from Oyo using structured questionnaire from all the four Agricultural Development Programme zones in Oyo State. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, mean score and index score. Information on socio economic characteristics revealed that most (88.9%) of the fish hatchery farmers were in the active age bracket of 31-60 years, majority (86.8%) were married male. The mean household size was 7 persons per household with majority (53.4%) having above 6 years of fish hatchery experience. The grand mean score for agencies/channel examined in this study was 1.68, information usage index was 0.56. Levels of awareness were relatively high but there were low adoption rate for some of the fish hatchery production technologies. Based on the available evidences, it was recommended that all fish farmers should be trained on hatchery operations regardless of level of educational status. Therefore, regular workshop should be organized for the producers and the most available and cost effective innovations on hatchery enterprises should be made available to all the categories of fish farmers irrespective of their gender.