Journal of Animal Science and Veterinary Medicine

This study investigated the investment patterns of small-scale livestock farmers in Edo State, Nigeria. A sample of 240 small-scale livestock farmers was drawn from six Local Government Areas (LGAs) and surveyed using a structured questionnaire. Descriptive statistics and inferential statistics (such as Tobit Regression Analysis) were used to analyze the data. The result of the analysis revealed that the majority (77.5%) of livestock farmers invested below the mean credit volumes of N383,366.7. This explains the reason why the livestock business was dominated by small-scale livestock farmers in the study area. The result of Tobit Regression revealed that income generation (z = 3.09; p ≤ 0.01), population/urbanization (z = 3.33; p ≤ 0.01), farm expansion (z = 2.90; ip ≤ 0.01), purchase of farm equipment (z = 2.94; p ≤ 0.01), rising income among citizens (z =-2.75; P ≤ 0.01) and home remittance (z = -2.84; P ≤ 0.01) were significant factors influencing investment patterns of respondents. The study, also revealed that high breeding stock (Mean = 2.59), poor transportation (Mean = 2.58), inefficient government policy (Mean = 2.53), lack of vaccine/veterinary services (Mean = 2.30), lack of extension services (Mean = 2.30), low income (Mean = 2.23) and non-availability of farmland (Mean = 2.11) were rated very serious in order of magnitude as factors militating against investments in the study area.  The study, therefore, recommends special government intervention programmes that would give incentives to small-scale livestock farmers to enable them to scale up their livestock business and implement policies that would encourage a high level of investments among respondents.