Awareness of Improved Hatchery Management Practices among Fish Farmers in Lagos State

During the last decade, hatchery infrastructure and table fish production systems have been exclusively targeted towards catfish production in Nigeria. These efforts have not translated to sufficient domestic fish production. The shortfall in demand for fish fry and fingerlings by growing population of fish farms in Lagos State confirms the fish seed production deficiency. This study investigated the level of awareness of improved hatchery management practices among fish farmers in Lagos State. Using simple random sampling method, 150 fish farmers from 12 local government areas of Lagos State were selected and interviewed using a structured questionnaire. The majority of the respondents were male (68 %) and married (76.6 %), with dominant age range of 41–50 years (55.3 %) and a farming experience of 5–10 years (68 %). Personal saving (46.7 %) and cooperative societies (31.3 %) were the respondents’ main sources of fund and fortnight visits by extension agent was of commonest frequency (86 %). Extension agents and research institutes ranked first and second, respectively, among the sources of information, and accounted for the main sources of information to the farmers. The farmers either strongly agreed or agreed on almost all the hatchery management practices, while they expressed their need for advisory and input support services from government and non-governmental organizations. The significant relationship which exists between age and marital status, and farmers’ awareness shows that greater communication of improved hatchery management practices will lead to adoption, thereby increasing the output of the farmers. Improved hatchery output will lead to greater availability of fish seeds for table size production as well as greater income to the fish farmers. In addition to more intensive extension efforts, other channels of information notably mass media should be revitalized in delivering improved management practices to the fish farmers.