FACTORS INFLUENCING SMALL SCALE POULTRY IN ADO EKITI, EKITI STATE

ABSTRACT In Nigeria, the population of food has not increased at the rate that can meet the increasing population. The apparent disparity between the rate of food production and demand for food in Nigeria has led to the increasing resort to food importation and high rates of increasing food prices. The demand and supply gap for animal protein intake is so high. The FAO recommends that the minimum intake of protein by an average person should be 65gm per day of this , 36gm i.e. 40 percent should come from animal sources. Nigeria is presently unable to meet this requirement. The study therefore, wants to examine economics of poultry egg production in ado ekiti and its environs in Ekiti state, Nigeria. Multistage sampling technique was used to select 54 respondent used for this analysis. The result indicates that 41/50 years are the highest modal class of 31.5 percent. Evidence from the analysis also revealed that majority 85 percent of the farmers had age ranging 40/68 years with a modal mean of 49.34. The mean household sixe of 7.6 implies a fairly good family labour particularly in a situation where labour availability is mainly family size dependent. The result revealed that 50 percent of the respondents had primary education and only 22.2 percent had secondary education. on the average, most farmers 78 percent spent less than 6 years in schooling implying that most of the farmers do not go beyond primary education. It is expected that education will not only influence their productivity but also profitability. Farmers with higher education are expected to be more productive and have more profits. Farmers in the study area are the active and thus could help productivity of egg production . Gross margin analysis shows a significant rate of 89.61 percent Profitability index of 0.21 Model fit 69 percent