WOMEN INVOLVEMENT IN LIVESTOCK PRODUCTION ACTIVITIES IN KANO STATE, NIGERIA

The study evaluated the involvement of women in livestock production in Kano State, Nigeria. Multi-stage sampling procedure was used to select 90 respondents from three local government areas namely; Kumbotso, Bunkure and Kura. Data were collected with the aid of structured questionnaire and analyzed using descriptive statistics. The result revealed that about 36.25% of the respondents fell within the age bracket of (26-35), while 33.75% of the respondents were within the age bracket of (36-45) years. In addition, 48% of the respondents were married, 30% of the respondents had informal (Quaranic education) followed by 25% who had secondary education. Further more, above half (58.54%) of the respondents were motivated to engage in livestock production based on their desire for additional income, 39.0% ventured into livestock production as a source of employment, whereas 2.44% saw this enterprise as a means to provide animal protein for their families. About 37% of the respondents were involved in small ruminant production (sheep and goats) while the majority (79%) of the respondents were involved in cleaning, water supply, milking and young animal care. The constraints to women involvement in livestock production were high cost of feed (with a weighted mean score of 3.0 and ranked 1st ) and veterinary services (with a weighted mean score of 2.9 and ranked 2nd ). This study therefore recommends that farmers should locally source for feed ingredients from their immediate environments to meet their production demands. Also, farmers should join cooperatives such that they can pull resources together to meet their production cost.