FEED MILLS DISTRIBUTION, OPERATIONS, MANAGEMENT AND CONSTRAINTS IN SOUTH WESTERN NIGERIA

Abstract: Feed mills play a significant role in the success of the livestock industry. Nigeria’s animal feed sector remains under developed, largely due to high production costs. The South Western part of the country accounts for over 75 percent of feed mills in the country. However, very little information on the activities of the feed mills in the zone is available. This study was therefore carried out to elicit information on the activities of the feed mills in six states (Ekiti, Lagos, Ogun, Ondo, Osun and Oyo) of the South Western part of Nigeria. A multistage sampling method was adopted for this study. In the first stage, feed mills in the aforementioned states were identified, in the second stage, three senatorial districts from each of these states were selected for the sampling and in the third stage, and communities were proportionally selected from each of the three senatorial districts for the sampling and distribution of the questionnaires. 20 questionnaires were administered to the feed mill managers in each of the 3 selected towns within each of the three senatorial districts of each state, making a total of 360 in all. However, only 151 questionnaires were recovered, processed and subjected to descriptive statistics using frequency counts and percentage. From the results obtained, 78.1% of the feed mill managers were male. The mean age of respondents (41-50 yrs.) was 37.3%. Eighty One (81) percent were married, the household size (1-5) was 66.9%, while 64.8% received tertiary formal education, twenty nine percent of the managers had 11-15 years feed milling experience, 39% of the managers were traders while the remaining claimed to diversify, 45% saw feed milling as investment opportunity, aggregation of livestock farms (39.2%) influenced siting of feed mill, 54.9% of respondents used personal savings to start the business, 41% of the respondents operate on medium scale, production capacity was less than 1 tonne per day (35.8%), semi-modern level of automation (51.9%), source of power was from the national grid (51.9%), and electric generator (48.5%), problems faced by feed mill industry in the study area include lack of capital, irregular supply of electricity, theft of produce and unavailability of feed ingredients. The study recommended that the feed millers should establish cooperative groups among themselves from which members could acquire loans at very low interest rates. Also, sophisticated tools and expensive machines could be jointly purchased by the group for the use of the members. Keywords: Feedmill; operations; management; constraints; South-West Nigeria. Title: FEED MILLS DISTRIBUTION, OPERATIONS, MANAGEMENT AND CONSTRAINTS IN SOUTH WESTERN NIGERIA Author: Folorunso, O.R., Sule, K., Bakre, A.A. International Journal of Novel Research in Life Sciences ISSN 2394-966X Vol. 11, Issue 4, July 2024 - August 2024 Page No: 32-39 Novelty Journals Website: www.noveltyjournals.com Published Date: 15-August-2024 DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.13325137 Paper Download Link (Source) https://www.noveltyjournals.com/upload/paper/FEED%20MILLS%20DISTRIBUTION,%20OPERATIONS-15082024-2.pdf