Economic appraisal and resource use efficiency of small broiler units in Jammu & Kashmir state of India

The economic appraisal of small broiler units was carried out in Jammu district of Jammu & Kashmir state of India. The majority of broiler farms were existed in and around Jammu city of Jammu district. The cost and returns were calculated by categorizing broiler farms into three sizes; less than 500 birds, 501-1000 birds and more than 1000 birds. The data were collected from 60 broiler producers, 20 from each category during the year 2014. The cost of production, mortality rates and returns from broiler production were estimated in different categories of broiler farms under study. The cost of chicks constituted the highest item of variable cost in all categories of farms, i.e., 40.47% which was followed by cost of feed (37.19%), cost of medicine, vaccination and veterinary fee (11.78%), cost of labour (5.49%), miscellaneous cost (2.71%), cost of flooring material (1.35%), cost of electricity (0.74%) and cost of fumigation (0.27%). The overall gross income in all the broiler farms was Rs. 12705.08 whereas net income was Rs. 4139.72. The overall benefit-cost ratio was 1.48. The analysis of benefit-cost ratio for 100 chicks signifies that large broiler farms are more profitable than the small farms due to the optimum utilization of both fixed and variable inputs involved in the broiler production. The ratios of MVP to MFC were positive and more than unity for chicks, human labour and vaccine, drugs & veterinary fee i.e. 1.4768, 1.3934 and 5.3531, respectively, indicating the underutilization of these resources, whereas for feeds, the ratio although came positive but it was less than unity i.e. 0.5779, indicating that the resource was over-utilized.