ECONOMICS OF BACKYARD POULTRY BROILER PRODUCTION

ABSTRACT

Backyard poultry broiler production in Edo state is primarily carried out by smallscale farmers who raise few number of chickens (50 - 100) and make use of local poultry feeding materials such as maize, sorghum, and kitchen waste as feed. Although large number of the farmers make use of commercial poultry feed. The major challenge facing Backyard poultry broiler production in Edo state is the high cost of Backyard poultry inputs such as poultry feed and labour. This study evaluated the profitability of backyard poultry broiler production in Ikpoba-Okha Local Government Area, Edo State, Nigeria. The study specifically describes the socio-economic characteristics of backyard poultry farmers in the study area, estimate the production cost and return from Backyard poultry broiler production, estimate the technical efficiency of backyard poultry broiler production, and Identify constraint associated with backyard poultry broiler production. A multi stage sampling procedure was used. The first stage involes purposive sampling of 10 wards from the local government area. This was based on the researcher’s prior knowledge of wards well noted for broiler production. The second stage involved snowball sampling techniques to know communities involved in backyard poultry broiler production. The third stage involved a random sampling of ten (10) respondents, each from the list of registered backyard poultry farmers provided by the ADP in the 10 selecteed communities to whom questionnaire were administered. The result of the descriptive statistics showed that most of the farmers are young, and the enterprise is mostly dominated by females who stock their birds in bits of 80-100 at a time, and majority of them make use of commercial feed. Poultry farming is lucrative in the study area with an average profit of over ₦300,000 and a gross margin of over ₦400,000. Cost of feed and housing accounted for the highest percentage of the variable costs and fixed costs, respectively. The stochastic frontier analysis showed that capital had a significant and positive relationship with the technical efficiency of production in the study area. It was also observed that inadequate labour was the only serious constraint in the study area.