ANALYSIS OF BROILER PRODUCTION IN THE SOUTHERN AGRICULTURAL ZONE OF NASARAWA STATE, NIGERIA

The study analyzed broiler production in the Southern Agricultural Zone of Nasarawa State. The study adopted a multi-stage sampling technique to select 60 broiler farmers, primary data on items such as age, gender, level of education, cost of production were collected with the aid of well structured questionnaire and interviewing method. The data were analyzed with descriptive statistics, costs and returns analysis and multiple regression models. The findings revealed that majority (60%) of the broiler farmers were male and 58.3% had tertiary education, 50.0% had 1-5 persons in their households and 36.7% had 6-10years farming experience. It was also revealed from the findings that 50.0% had small flock size between 100-200 birds. The analysis of the costs and returns indicated that the total revenue of broiler farmers was N331, 941.67, the total cost of broiler farmers was N162, 167.99 and the total fixed cost was N12, 344.09. The gross and net farm income were estimated at 182,177.77 and 169,833.61 and net farm income per naira invested of N1.05 which showed that broiler production is profitable. Also, the multiple linear regression showed that F=42.927, R=0.923 and R2 indicated that about 85.2% of the variation in the dependent variable was explained by the independent variables. Age, Level of education, Farming experience, Flock Size were positively correlated with the farmers net farm income involved in broiler production, while gender, marital status and household were negatively correlated. Age was significant at 1%, level of education at 1%, gender at 10% and years of experience in poultry at 10%. However broiler production was constrained by inadequate credit, high cost of day old chicks, and high cost of feed, pest and diseases infestation, lack of electricity among others. Based on the results from the findings of this research It was concluded that broiler production was profitable and showed that broiler production depends to a large extent on proper care and efficiency of the necessary resources to maximize profit. It was recommended that poultry farming should be encouraged among young and educated people, broiler farmers should be granted access to loan facilities, research institutions should provide lasting solutions to menace of pest and disease outbreak and government should provide extension service agents to assist the farmers in the areas of management and technical competency