Does publishing poultry vaccination schedule increase awareness and compliance among small scale farmers? Evidence from Eastern Ghana

Abstract

Poultry vaccination reduces birds’ mortality risk and its related eco nomic impacts. The Veterinary Services Directorate of Ghana publishes a national poultry vaccination schedule for farmers to comply with. Yet disease outbreaks occur, raising the question of whether poultry farmers comply with the vaccina tion protocols. This paper assesses vaccination compliance and its determinants among small-scale farmers, using Birim Central Municipality as a case study. We employed descriptive statistics, Kendall’s coefficient of concordance and a Poisson count model to analyse cross-sectional data collected from 60 poultry farmers. We find that level of awareness about vaccination is higher than the level of compliance. The Poisson model reveals that access to veterinary services, poultry management training, large flock size, and having experienced poultry disease on the farm positively affect the extent of compliance with the schedule. On the other hand, male farmers are less likely to comply than female farmers. The most pressing constraints to poultry vaccination are inadequate access to finance, inadequate veterinarians and high cost of veterinary services. We recommend that poultry industry stakeholders take necessary measures to increase farmers’ contacts with veterinary officers and intensify peer education on vaccination.