Effect of Poultry Farmers’ Socioeconomic Features on Selected Production Limiting Factors in Southwest Nigeria
Authors:   Department of Agricultural Extension and Management Lagos State University of Science and Technology Ikorodu, Lagos State, Nigeria, Ogunyemi Oluwole I. (PhD) 
Published: April 2022

Poultry farmers are faced with many problems that reduce their capacity utilisation. The challenges have made a lot of poultry entrepreneurs to leave the business compellingly. Many interventions have been applied to solve production problems of the poultry farmers but they have not given the desired results. Also, literatures on poultry production in Nigeria are many and growing focusing mainly on production, economic and marketing research questions. Few have linked the socio-economic factors of poultry farmers with production management and challenges. The research, therefore, analysed the effects of socio-economic characteristics of poultry farmers on selected problems of poultry farming. Two-stage sampling procedure was adopted. At the first stage, three states: Ekiti, Lagos and Ondo were purposefully selected and at the second stage, simple random sampling was used to select 320 poultry farmers in the three states out of which 307 were successful for analysis. Data were collected on 10 socio-economic characteristics and 5 production problems: adverse effect of climate change, disease incidence, high cost of transportation, high feeds cost and high cost of drugs. Frequency distribution, percentage and Probit model were used to analyse data. 76.55%, 63.84%, 68.73% and 67.10% of the farmers were male, married, into farming as main occupation and belonged to cooperative in that order. Poultry farmers using battery cage system have higher likelihood, 0.497, of facing adverse effect of climate change than the farmers using deep litter system while those in Ekiti State have lower likelihood (-0.506) of facing the problem of climate change than those in Ondo and Lagos States. The likelihood of having disease incidence declines with membership of cooperative and increase in years of experience among the poultry farmers with the coefficients of -0.705 and -0.035 respectively. Poultry farmers that are members of cooperative are less likely to have high transportation cost and high cost of feeds as problems from the coefficients of -0.525 and -0.726 correspondingly. Though the probability of having high cost of drugs as production problem increases with age of farmers, older farmers are less likely to have the problem and farmers that have poultry production as main occupation have higher probability of having high cost of drugs than those that are into poultry farming as secondary occupation with the coefficients of 0.156, -0.002 and 0.402 respectively. The study recommends that deep litter system of production should be encouraged among poultry farmers to reduce the adverse effects of climate change. Cooperative membership should be encouraged among the poultry farmers to reduce transportation cost and disease incidence on farms. Also, poultry drug related assistance should be given to the farmers that engage in the enterprise as main occupation which demands the identification of poultry farmers that are into the enterprise as main occupation. Key words: Climate change, Cost of feeds, Cost of drug, Cost of transportation, Poultry farmer, Southwest Nigeria