CHAPTER
TWO
REVIEW
OF RELATED LITERATURE
INTRODUCTION
Poultry are the
smallest livestock investment a village household can make. Yet the poverty
stricken farmer needs credit assistance even to manage this first
investment step on
the ladder out of poverty. Poultry keeping is traditionally the role of women
in many developing countries. Female-headed households
represent 20 to 30
percent of all rural households in Bangladesh (Saleque, 1999), and women are
more disadvantaged in terms of options for income
generation. In
sub-Saharan Africa, 85 percent of all households keep poultry, with women
owning 70 percent of the poultry. (Guéye, 1998 and Branckaert,
1999, citing World
Poultry 14). Income generation is the primary goal of family poultry keeping.
Eggs can provide a regular, albeit small, income while the sale
of live birds
provides a more flexible source of cash as required. For example, in the
Dominican Republic, family poultry contributes 13 percent of the income
from animal
production (Rauen et al., 1990). The importance of poultry to rural households
is illustrated by the example below from the United Republic of
Tanzania. Assuming an
indigenous hen lays 30 eggs per year, of which 50 percent are consumed and the
remainder has a hatchability of 80 percent, then each
hen will produce 12
chicks per year.
2.2
THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
One of the key
pillars on which the neoclassical theory of the firm stands is the assumption
of profit maximization. It is a simple but controversial assumption
that states that the
objective of the firm is wholly and single-mindedly the maximization of profit.
Many adherents of profit maximization have advanced a lot
of arguments in
support of their position. These include one based on the realism and
predictive value of the assumption of profit maximization itself and the
other based on a
supposedly long-run survivalist instinct of the firm. But there are three types
of factors, which may militate against a firm achieving
maximum profit
(Olayemi, 2004). They are:
(i) Uncertainty and
lack of information needed for rational decision making;
(ii) The pursuit of
multiple objectives by the firm of which profit earning may be only one of
them;
(iii) Restraint
imposed on the single-minded pursuit of profit maximization by such other
considerations as the prevention of potential entry of new firms as
competitors, the
long-term survival of the firm and self-preservation of the top management of
the firm, which short-run profit maximization alone, would
not guarantee. The
issue of profit maximization is, therefore, not about whether the simple types
of firms envisaged in traditional theory do strive to earn the
highest profit
achievable, given real-life uncertainty, inadequate information and other
constraints, or whether they behave as if they maximize profit, but
rather about
achieving a minimum satisfactory profit since firms can survive, even over the
long period, without maximizing profit, if there are adequate
barriers against
actual entry or threat of new entry of firms in the forms of, say,
limit-pricing, government legislation, product dierentiation,
absolute cost
advantage, large
initial capital requirement for entry, and large economies of scale.
Origin and
Domestication of Chicken is a country with heavy human population and this
population is continuously on the rise. This increase had lead to the high
demand for the available
animal and poultry
products in all parts of the country. Among the cheapest and highly aord-able
protein source for this teeming population is mainly the
poultry products.
Poultry, particularly chickens are very important and has been recognised as an
important genetic resource among the avian species
(Olowofeso et al.,
2005). Genetic evidence confirms that chickens are derived from multiple
maternal origins in Asia (Liu et al., 2006). Chickens are the most
widely distributed of
all livestock species in Nigeria with a population of 166 million birds
(FAOSTAT, 2007). Chickens play very significant socio-cultural and
economic roles in
most African societies. Quantifying the structure of genetic diversity in
dierent African chicken populations is of significance in optimizing
conservation and
utilization strategies. The description of Nigerian local chickens is based on
phenotypic traits (Nwosu et al., 1985; Adebambo et al., 1999).
Such information if
complemented with findings obtained using molecular markers could be useful in
formulating long term inference or plans for genetic
improvement programs.
A detail genetic study of chicken populations in Nigeria is therefore
imperative so as to integrate the resource into the poultry sector.
The genetic
variations of the chicken populations in the country need investigation so as
to identify populations of particular merit.
