**4. Results**

*4.1. Socio-Economic Characteristics of the Respondents*

Table 3 depicts the socio-economic characteristics of the respondents. When it comes to farming, age is a debatable topic; the average age of the farmers was 52 years. The average formal education of smallholder livestock farmers was eight years (Table 3). The results show that 54% of the respondents had primary education, 42% secondary education, and only 4% had tertiary education.

An average of 11 years of farming experience was observed. As indicated in Table 3, the minimum length of farming experience was half a year, and the maximum was 60 years. The average number of household members was five, with a minimum of one and a maximum of 25 members. From the study's findings, 61 (28%) of the respondents were women, while 156 (72%) were men.

The majority of the respondents were married (57%), 27% single, 9% widowed, 2% divorced, 1% separated, and the remaining respondents (4%) noted other (Table 3). The findings indicated that 51% of the respondents used their family savings to support their farming business, while 8% borrowed money and 41% used other ways of supporting their farming business. Farming is considered a business entity, and thus the majority of the smallholder livestock farmers (86%) depended solely on farming, and 14% owned additional businesses. In addition, only 5% of the respondents owned additional property as a source of income besides livestock farming.
