ABSTRACT
Assessing the perceived management competencies of the poultry workers becomes a necessity due to the general observation of inefficiency in poultry enterprises leading to low productivity. Management problems have plunged poultry operators into a huge loss in recent times, this study thus assessed the perceived management competencies of the poultry workers using Borich’s model. It was carried out in Kwara State and it covered the four Kwara ADP Zones. The result shows that the mean age of the poultry workers is 25.54 years and 73.7% of themwere male. Majority (51.3%) of them have secondary education and their mean income was N13,135. The poultry workers showed much competencies in managing feeding system(MWDS=0.00205), control of sanitary condition(MWDS=0.00173), litter management(MWDS=0.00288), while they showed little competencies in feed formulation(MWDS=-0.00128),debeaking(MWDS=0.0098), prevention of diseases(MWDS=0.00967) and identifying ecto-parasites(MWDS=0.00839) Their major constraints were lack of adequate training(2.90), poor motivation of workers(2.72) and little income received(2.57). The Ordinary Least Square result shows that education (p = 0.002), the poultry work experience (p = 0.000) and the capacity of the farm (p = 0.044) have positive significance with respondents competence. It was however concluded that the poultry workers exhibit a lot of competencies in their management practices, but lacking competencies in selected few practices. They are however constrained by some factors which affects their effective performance. Training is recommended in feed formulation, disease prevention and identifying ecto-parasite, while meeting the identified constraints will enhance their effective performance.
