ABSTRACT
The local demand of chicken-egg has not been matched with local supply in contempt of the growth in the chicken-egg production industry which prompted this study to examine the economics of small-scale chicken egg production in Edo State with the objective to determine the profitability of the enterprise as well the technical efficiency of the farmers in Edo state.
A two stage sampling procedure was adopted in selecting the respondents for this study. The first stage of sampling involved a purposive sampling of Local Government Areas (LGA) in the study area where poultry production dominated from a list gotten from the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, Edo state, and the second, involved a simple random sampling of the respondents from the selected LGAs with a sample size estimator to obtain a total of 123 respondents from the study area.Structured questionnaire are administered to the respondents through personal interview to obtain needed data. The data were analysed using non-graphical explanatory data analysis, budgetary and stochastic Frontier production function.
The results revealed that most respondents (65%) were male having an average stock size of 522 birds, with an average age of 43years and 5years farming experience. Furthermore, the average Gross Margin, in Akoko Edo, Egor, Ikpoba Okha and Oredo was ₦885.40 ₦1119.73, ₦1148.46 and ₦2553.37 respectively, with net income of ₦849.48 ₦1070.54 ₦1098.52 and ₦2497.39 and return on investment of 1.72, 1.07, 2.54 and 2.80 respectively. These values mean that chicken-egg production was a lucrative enterprise in the study area. Estimate of coefficients of the stochastic frontier model for chicken-egg production shows that the estimated parameters were positive excluding water and family labour. Only the parameters estimate of stock, medication, water, sawdust, feed intake and family labour were of statistically significant, inefficiency model analysis revealed that factors influencing technical efficiency were farmers experience, family size, age, primary and secondary education. The study concluded that chicken egg production was profitable and chicken egg farmers were inefficient in their production. The study identified limited finance and high cost of inputs as the most serious constraints to the chicken-egg business in the area. It is recommended that stakeholders in poultry sub-sector to setup a modern feed mill in the state; extension agents should be encouraged; credit and inputs should be made available and affordable to poultry farm owners. It also recommended increase participation of young people in chicken egg production enterprise as productivity and efficiency was observed to be improved in their hands and also sustaining the enterprise for long term to ensure even distribution of egg to the ever increasing population. Farmers should be helped to improve on their literacy level and also improve their accessibility to extension services to aid their acceptance and adoption of new innovation and technologies on effective management and allocation of resources so as to improve efficiency and productivity.
