Abstract

The present investigation was conducted to evaluate the comparative economics of two methods of Vanaraja chicken rearing under backyard system i.e. improved technologies demonstrated under Front Line Demonstration (FLD) and Farmer’s Practice (FP) traditionally adopted by the farmers. All together 120 farmers from 12 randomly selected villages of West Siang district of Arunachal Pradesh having experience of poultry rearing for more than two years were selected for FLD. The study (from August, 2015 to July, 2017) reveals that, the technologies demonstrated in FLDs recorded higher body weight gain of male chickens (2300g) over FP (1800g) at 20 weeks of age, which was 27.78% higher than that of Farmers’ Practice. Mean annual egg production under FLD was recorded as 110 numbers which was 37.50% higher than that of FP (80). The estimated technology gap in body weight gain was recorded as 200 g/bird, whereas for egg production it was 20 numbers/bird. The extension gap of body weight gains and egg production was recorded as 500 g/bird and 30 numbers/bird, respectively with a technology index of 8% in body weight gain and 15.38% in egg production. The benefit cost (B: C) ratio for Vanaraja chicken rearing under FLD and Farmers’ Practice was recorded as 2.62:1 and 1.71:1, respectively which indicated that under improved rearing techniques demonstrated under FLD Vanaraja chicken gives much more profit than that of rearing techniques under FP. Non availability of improved germplasm of poultry (93.33%) was given the top ranking while weak market linkage to dispose the produce (35.00%) was given as bottom ranking in the constraints matrix ranking in poultry production. Under client satisfaction index over the performance of FLD analysis reveals 63.33% of high satisfaction index over the performance of FLDs while 27.50% respondent expressed medium level of satisfaction and only 9.17% respondent expressed low level of satisfaction index.