Determinants of Income among Layer Bird Marketers in Imo State, Nigeria

The growing concern to encourage Layer bird farmers to increase production as a result of demand-supply gap evident in high cost of spent layers in the market is important to both consumers and suppliers. The study examined determinants of income among layer bird marketers in Imo State, Nigeria. It specifically described the socio-economic characteristics of the marketers; examined costs and return of the marketers, effect of socioeconomic characteristics of the marketers on income realized and constraints affecting marketing of layer birds in the area. Multi-stage sampling method was used to select 208layer marketers. Primary data were collected using structured questionnaire administered to the respondents by personal interview. Data collected were analyzed using descriptive statistics, enterprise budgeting techniques and multiple regression analysis. Gender distribution of the respondents shows female dominance of 58.7% with a mean age of 48 years, having household size of 4-6persons. Majority (63.5%) had marital responsibilities with a mean educational year of 10.9 and a mean year of experience of 14.8. Layer poultry marketing was profitable given the positive values of gross margin, net marketing income, mean net marketing income and net return on investment of N19,995,300, N15,944,440, N76,655.9 and 0.29. The significant determinants of income for layer marketers were purchases, selling price, and marketing cost at 1% and 5% probability level respectively. Government should provide of financial assistance and regulate feed prices to marketers through co-operative groups to ease their capital constraint and thus improve the income realized by the marketers since the result indicates that layer marketing is a viable venture in Nigeria.