Adoption of Scientific Poultry Farming Practices by the Broiler Farmers in Haryana, India

The present study was undertaken on 125 broiler farmers randomly selected from five districts, Hisar, Jind, Fatehabad, Sirsa and Bhiwani of Hisar division of Haryana to assess extent of adoption of various scientific practices by the broiler farmers. The package of practices recommended by regional state agricultural university was adopted as the set of scientific practices. The information was collected with the help of a pre-tested structured interview schedule. As a general trend, it was observed that the farmers with smaller flock size are poor adopters of technology. In case of small category farmers, a majority of respondents reported low level of adoption. Of the respondents from medium category, an equal number had adopted low, medium and high level of practice. Almost all of the large category farmers reported a high level of adoption. These results indicate that information seeking behavior of different categories of farmers was totally different based on the size of their enterprises. The larger enterprise possessed better knowledge base and better resourcefulness. Two distinct points emerge from the study: (1) uniform or blanket approach in the organization of poultry extension services is likely to meet only partial success and (2) there is poor information sharing in the peer to peer networks and there are diverse information sources for different categories of farmers. Also, local appropriation of knowledge and technology is an important factor.