Vol. 9, Issue 3 (2020)

Author(s):
Rita Bharti and MP Sagar

Abstract:
Backyard poultry production serves as a small scale business for rural women to generate income within their local premises. The enterprise provides regular in hand money with use of very less resources usually available locally. As a result of its nature of easy to manage with household activities, it acts as an effective tool for empowerment of women. This study was conducted in Bundelkhand region of Uttar Pradesh considering 80 backyard poultry rearing rural women. The semi-structured interview schedule was used in present study sought to identify production performance of backyard poultry at household level. The statistical tools used for analysis of collected data were percentage, frequency, range, mean and standard deviation. Result revealed that majority (98.75%) of rural women was having small flock size (5-13 in nos.) and all of them were found to re-generate flock. Majority of rural women (75.00%) had small (8-12 in nos.) eggs set per hatch and small hatch (6-9, 65%). Overwhelming majority (86.25%) of the rural women reported ‘attack of predator’ as major cause of mortality. 88.75 per cent of them were rearing backyard poultry for the purpose of additional source of income. Average egg and meat production per household per year were 96.25 in nos. and 15.79 kg, respectively. Annually 75 per cent of rural women were categorized in low level of eggs production (30-90 eggs) per household whereas medium level of meat production (12-17 kg) with 65 per cent of rural women. It is concluded that backyard poultry is a good source of income but these can be maximize only by increasing productivity and decreasing mortality by focusing on care of day old to adult stage of life of the birds. There is need for the government to improve information and veterinary services related to poultry production and management (breeding, brooding, feeding, housing and health). Use of extension programmes in enriching skills of rural women to run scientific backyard poultry and use of new technologies can be much helpful to maximize productivity at farm level with consideration of effective execution and monitoring of these programmes.