Abstract
This study considers analysing factors influencing the choice of production systems in poultry egg farming in the southwest of Nigeria. Specifically, the study describes the socio-economic characteristics of the respondents and also identifies the factors affecting farmers’ decisions to select production system in poultry egg farming. The data for the study were collected from 360 egg farmers using a purposive and snowball sampling techniques. Information on socio-economic characteristics of the farmers and poultry-specific attributes was collected through a well-structured questionnaire. Statistical tools employed in this study were both descriptive and inferential statistics. The descriptive statistics used were mean and standard deviations, while the multinomial logit model was used to determine the probability of selecting a choice reference to a base category. Results show that the mean age is 44 years with 98% male respondents. The study shows that 52% of the farmers use battery cage system only, 37% use deep litter system only and 11% use both systems. The marginal effects estimated from the multinomial logit model show that the probability of choosing deep litter system only, increases with gender, price per crate of egg, farming experience and flock size. The results also reveal that distance to the market, price per crate of egg, poultry farming experience and farm location, ceteris paribus, increase the probability of using both systems compared with the battery cage system. This study concludes that education of the poultry egg farmer, price of egg, flock size and experience of the farmer are key factors influencing the choice of layer production system. Based on these findings, it is suggested that all the significant variables identified in this study should be given more attention in policy making.
