ENTREPRENEURIAL BEHAVIOUR OF WOMEN DAIRY FARMERS OF KERALA STATE

The present study was undertaken in three districts of Kerala, viz.,Ernakulam, Palakkad and Thrissur. A proportionate stratified multistage random sampling procedure was used to select 153 respondents from, Vandazhi panchayatin Alathur block, Karukutty panchayatAngamali block andNadathara panchayath in Ollukara block. A sample of 51 women dairy farmers were selected from each panchayat so as to include 17 women each with one, two and more than two cow units. Data were collected through the personal interview method with a structured pretested interview schedule.Entrepreneurial Behaviour (EB) was measured by developing an index known as the Entrepreneurial Behaviour Index (EBI) as described by Senthilvinayagam (1999).Most of the respondents in the one cow category in this study exhibited entrepreneurial characteristics that qualified them to fall in the medium category (56.86 %) whereas 43.13 per cent were placed in the category indicating a low level of entrepreneurial behaviour.In the case of respondents with two cow units, most of the women (78.44%) fell in the medium level category with respect to entrepreneurial behaviour.Results of the analysis of variance between the three herd size respondents indicated that there were significant differences between the respondents of three herd sizes with regard to the entrepreneurial behaviour index and all the dimension of entrepreneurial behaviour as well