Effects of Farmer Socio-Demographics on Animal Welfare Knowledge and Practices in Peri-Urban Duck Production Systems

Animal welfare (AW) is an important issue in sustainable livestock production. However, many small farmers in developing countries still do not understand and widely apply AW.

This study aims to investigate the impact of farm and farmer characteristics, including age, education, farming experience, and flock size, on AW knowledge (AWK) and practices among duck farmers in Bekasi, Indonesia.

A cross-sectional survey was conducted on 29 duck farmers using a structured questionnaire that assessed farm and farmer characteristics, AWK, and AWP in accordance with the Five Freedoms of AW. Binary logistic regression was used to analyze the data and identify factors influencing AWK, and AWP. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis was used to evaluate the discriminatory performance of significant predictors.

Among the 29 peri-urban duck farmers, 72.4% demonstrated high AWK, whereas only 20.7% demonstrated high welfare practices. Logistic regression identified education as a significant predictor of welfare knowledge and farming experience as a significant predictor of welfare practices. ROC analysis indicated that farming experience had fair discriminative ability for high welfare practices (area under the curve = 0.786). Despite the small sample size, the findings reflect the characteristics of the small duck-farming population in peri-urban Bekasi.

AWK did not vary across farmer characteristics, whereas education and experience influenced AWP. These findings highlight the importance of training and extension programs to improve AW in peri-urban duck farming.