Q. M. E. Huque

A survey was carried out to investigate the production and utilization pattern of family poultry. A total of 500 households from five regions were interviewed. The result revealed that the highest number of poultry per farm was found with large farmers (22.7) while the lowest was found with landless farmers (7.3).

The highest number of birds was available at the farm household during April-June and that was the lowest during July-September. Highest number (41.7) of eggs per bird was found during January-March while the lowest (25.8) was during July-September.

Large farmers consumed more poultry than the other farm categories but they sold lowest number. The landless farmers consumed lowest (17.1) chicken meat but they sold highest number (82.9 percent). The large farmers consumed more chicken (43.9 percent) and duck (31.1 percent) eggs than other categories of farmers, which was opposite to the landless farmers (18.6 percent for chicken egg and 12.4 percent for duck egg). The income of small farmers (Tk. 1513) and landless (Tk. 1440) farmers were higher than that of medium (Tk. 944) and large (Tk. 736) farmers. Small farmers were the most effective beneficiaries of family poultry rearing in Bangladesh.

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Family poultry production in Bangladesh is spread all over the country without much input. It is a low input-low output profitable system with little care and with almost no extra supplementary feeding. About 98 percent of the poultry meat and eggs come from scavenging poultry (UNDP/FAO, 1983). More than 80 percent of the rural households raise poultry (Huque, 1987; Ahmed, 1988; Anonymous, 1985). Even in some areas about 96-98 percent of the households keep only chickens (Islam, 1987; Maijer, 1987). Maijer (1987) also found that 60 percent of the households kept ducks in Noakhali region.

There are about 138.2 million chicken and 13 million ducks in Bangladesh (Anonymous, 1998), and traditionally women and children are the raisers of these birds. Production performance of the family poultry is very low as compared to the intensive poultry industry. The scavenging indigenous chickens lay about 35-45 eggs per year (Bulbul, 1983; Ahmed and Islam, 1985; Sazzad, 1986; Huque et al., 1990) and ducks lay about 60-90 eggs per year (Salam and Bulbul, 1983; Latif, 1991; Salam and Aftab, 1987; Huque and Hossain, 1991; Huque, 1991).

Information on the family poultry is scarce. Improvement programmes cannot be chalked out due to lack of accurate data on production of family poultry. The UNDP/FAO project progress report (1986) on Bangladesh concluded that there was a great variation between villages in regard to the types of performance of each village chicken flock. However the cause of this variation was not known and too little quantitative data were available on the performance of family chickens. This study was undertaken to provide data which will help to overcome the lack of knowledge regarding production and utilization patterns of family poultry and the income generated in rural households through poultry rearing.

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Five areas were selected for survey on the basis of topography and ecology of the country. The areas were Savar, Sadar, Botyaghata, Birganj and Hathazari Thanas of Dhaka, Sylhet, Khulna, Dinajpur and Chittagong district, respectively. The first baseline survey was undertaken by a pre-tested questionnaire during January-February 1989. Two villages were selected in each Thana on the basis of secondary information collected from local Thana and District Livestock Officer.

Individual households (families) were interviewed directly by a Field Assistant and Scientific Officer. On the basis of baseline survey, the households were divided into four categories depending on their own land holdings as landless (0-0.5 acre), small (0.51-2.00 acres), medium (2.01-5.00 acres) and large (5.01-above acres) by using proportionate stratified sampling technique from all 10 villages.

One hundred poultry-raising households from each area were selected through stratified random sampling technique and a total of 500 households constituted the total sample size for the study. The interview schedule was maintained for four period covering one complete year, i.e. January-March, April-June, July-September and October-December. To collect accurate and reliable data, one enumerator was placed in each area for the whole year that visited each selected household several times during survey period. The Scientific Officer supervised the data collected by Field Assistant in each period.

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Distribution of family poultry
The numbers of chickens, ducks and pigeons per farm in the four categories of households are presented in Table 1. The data showed that the highest number of chickens (11.9), ducks (10.0) and pigeons (0.8) were owned by large farms and these were lowest in landless farms. The data showed that the number of chickens per farm was positively correlated with the farm size (r=0.83). The mean distribution of chickens, ducks and pigeons per farm were 7.2, 2.6 and 0.2, respectively. The average number of family poultry per farm was 10.0 (Table 1).

Table 1: Mean distribution of poultry per household by farm size

The structural features of the population of family poultry by season are given in Table 2. There was variation in the number of birds between the season in different age group. The percentage of cocks in the population was higher in October-December (4.8 percent) and April-July (4.5). The feature indicated that October-December period was the breeding season when the farmers keep more males for hatching eggs in future. The chicks hatched in October-December period come into maturity during April-June period, which causes the increased number of cock (4.5 percent) in this period. Adult males were removed from the flocks.

This results in lower numbers of cocks (1.9 percent) during July-September. These structures show that the farmers used to keep higher number of hens (19.9 percent) for reproduction during October-December. The chicks hatched during October-December started laying eggs during April-June, which might be the reason of highest number of hens observed during April-June. Maximum number of chicks (71.7 percent) was found in January-March where the lowest number (14.1 percent) was found in July-September. The demographic structure of chicken population was directly influenced by season of the year.

The mature ducks were highest (74.2 percent) in October-December and lowest (45.2 percent) in April-June. The highest number of ducklings (27.6 percent) was found in April-June, which indicates that the farmers hatched eggs for ducklings before the start of rainy season. No duckling was available in the months from October to December. The farmers do not hatch duck eggs during the winter season of the year (Table 2).

Table 2: Structure of family poultry by seasons (percent)

Figures within parenthesis indicate number of birds, n = number of farmers

The average chicken egg production per family was found to be the highest during January-March (20.6) and the lowest (16.4) during July-September in the year. In case of ducks, it was highest (21.1) and lowest (9.4) in the same season. The annual egg production per bird was 37.7 in chickens and 49.7 in ducks. This was highest in both species during January-March (17.7 in ducks and 10.2 in chickens). It was observed that the total egg production per bird was higher in ducks than in chickens, indicating that the production potentiality of indigenous ducks was better than that of indigenous chickens. This result was in agreement with that reported by Sazzad (1986) and Huque et al. (1990).

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Utilization pattern of poultry and eggs
The consumption and sale pattern of chickens by the farmers owning different family farm categories and from locations are presented in Table 3. Cockerels and cocks were more consumed more by all types of farmers, except for small farmers who consumed less cockerels. The highest percentage of chickens was consumed in Hathazari region (26.7 percent) in comparison with the other four regions, and the lowest consumption rate (8.0 percent) was observed in Birganj region. The landless farmers sold the highest proportions of chicken, except for cocks, and large farmers disposed of the lowest proportions of their birds. The highest (34.0) percentage of chickens was sold in Sylhet region and the lowest (1.0) in Savar region (Table 3). It was found that the large and medium farmers consumed more than two-thirds of their chicken production while the landless and small farmers sold two-thirds of their chicken production. This consumption and sale patterns indicated that landless and small farmers earn more cash money from poultry rearing.

Table 3: Utilization pattern of chickens in different family farm categories and locations

The Table 4 gives the consumption and sale pattern of ducks by the farmers owning different family farm categories and from locations. The percent of ducks consumed per farm was highest (13.9) in Botyaghata region and lowest (1.2) in Birganj region. The percent of ducks sold per farm was highest (37.8) in Sylhet region and lowest (0.58) in Hathazari region (Table 4). The consumption and sale pattern of ducks were similar to those of chickens but the large and medium farmers consumed less ducks than chickens.

Table 4: Utilization pattern of ducks in different family farm categories and locations

The highest number of chicken and duck eggs (43.9 percent and 31.1 percent) were consumed by the large farmers, while the lowest number of chicken and duck eggs (18.6 percent and 12.4 percent) were consumed by the landless farmers (Table 5). The data clearly indicated that the consumption of duck eggs was lower than that of chicken eggs.

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The landless farmers hatched highest percentage of chicken (44.1) and duck eggs (25.2) than other farm categories. These results demonstrated that the landless group used maximum eggs for production. The highest percentage of chicken eggs was lost (17.7 percent) by the large farmers, and the lowest loss (2.7 percent) was recorded by the small farmers (Table 5).

Table 5: Utilization of family poultry eggs according to the farm size (percent)

The yearly total income generated from the sale poultry and eggs are given in Table 6. The sale of live birds and eggs generated the highest (Tk. 1513) income in small farmers and the lowest (Tk.736) in large farmers (1 US $ = Tk.48.5). This clearly indicated that the small farmers were the most effective beneficiaries of poultry rearing in Bangladesh. The yearly income calculated for the consumed poultry meat and eggs per farm was highest (Tk. 1791) in large farms and lowest (Tk. 655) in landless farms, which demonstrated that landless families consumed the lowest number of birds from their production. The total yearly income generated by family poultry rearing was Tk. 2397 per farm under scavenging system of production. As more than 80 percent of the farmers raise poultry, family poultry have a great impact on national economy. It can be concluded that any intervention in family poultry production system, small and landless category farmers will be major beneficiaries which will have direct impact on poverty alleviation in developing countries.

Table 6: Income generated from poultry and egg in different family farm categories per year (in Taka)

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Ahmed, S. (1988): Role of farming system research in identification of problems of poultry production. Proceedings of the workshop on Livestock Component of Farming System Research in Bangladesh, 21st December 1988, Bangladesh Agricultural Research Council, Dhaka, Bangladesh.

Ahmed, S. and Islam, N. (1985): Backyard poultry development project in 100 villages. Proceedings of the 1st conference of Bangladesh Animal Husbandry Association, 23-24 February 1985, Bangladesh Agricultural Research Council, Dhaka, Bangladesh.

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Sazzad, M.H. (1986): Reproductive performance of Desi hens under scavenging and intensive systems of rearing. Proceedings, First Annual Livestock Research Workshop, Bangladesh Livestock Research Institute, Savar, Dhaka, Bangladesh.

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UNDP/FAO (1986): Project progress report, Rural Poultry Improvement BGD/82/003, Dhaka, Bangladesh.
 

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