Perceived Effects of Disposal of Droppings in Commercial Chicken Farms: Implications for Climate Change Resilient Practices in Nigeria

The Nigerian poultry industry rapidly expanding and the increase in chicken production has led to the increase in the emission of greenhouse gases that are responsible for climate change through global warming. Therefore, modern poultry farms need to practice Greenhouse Gas Emission Reduction Practices (GHGERPs) in order to reduce the effect of these dangerous gases. However, these gases accumulate in the chicken waster and disposal of these wastes become very important in managing the effect of the greenhouse gases but management of chicken droppings in commercial chicken farms in Nigeria has not been given adequate research attention, hence the need for this study. Therefore, the study was conducted to examine the perceived effects of chicken droppings in commercial chicken farms, analyze methods of waste disposal by volume and determine the determinants of GHGERPS expected to reduce the effect of greenhouse gases in commercial chicken farms in the study area. Structured questionnaire with a reliability value of 0.72 was used to sample 349 commercial chicken farms with a minimum of 5,000 chicken population in Plateau and Kwara States in the north and Oyo and Ogun States in the southern Nigeria. Descriptive statistics such as frequency, percentages and weighted mean scores were used to describe the data while Ordinary Least Square was used to identify the determinants of GHGERPs usage. Summary of the findings shows that the major methods of disposing droppings were re-use, selling to other farms, adding values, burning, curing for further use and convert to compost as well as solid disposal (heap). It was perceived that the droppings had serious negative effects on the build-up of ammonia, reservoir for diseases, heat generation and unbearable smell. Capital invested (β=1.35), farm age (β=0.005) and revenue (β=1.04) were the significant determinants of the usage of GHGERPS in the chicken farms. It was recommended that stakeholders in the energy sector could look into how the generated gases could be converted to useful energy and chicken farms should utilize high quality feeds as this has been documented to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases in chicken farms.