Abstract

Chicken production is an important source of nutrition and household income in Kenya. However, the high costs of inputs such as feeds and vaccines constrains smallholder farmers’ productivity. This study measured technical efficiency and technological gap ratio in smallholder chicken enterprises in Eastern Kenya. A total of 582 chicken farming households were selected from Machakos County using a multi-stage sampling technique. Stochastic metafrontier analysis was applied to evaluate and compare the technical efficiency of the chicken enterprises. The average technical efficiency score of 0.78 for the hybrid chicken enterprise and 0.48 for the indigenous chicken enterprise shows that hybrid chicken enterprise was more technically efficient and performed closer to the metafrontier then its counterpart. In addition, the TGR was 0.87 and 0.52 for hybrid and indigenous chicken enterprises, respectively. The inefficiency effect model results revealed that education (β = -0.073, p < 0.05 and β = -0.032, p < 0.05), extension contact (β = -0.049, p < 0.01 and β = -0.026, p < 0.05), and utilization of the agro-industrial by-products (β = -0.235, p < 0.05 and β = -0.118, p < 0.05) significantly reduced technical inefficiency in both hybrid and indigenous chicken enterprises, respectively. In addition, farming experience (β = 0.215, p < 0.05), use of commercial feeds (β = 0.114, p < 0.01), and use of BSF formulated feed (β = 0.256, p < 0.01) increased technical efficiency in hybrid chicken enterprise. However, distance to inputs market (β = -0.106, p < 0.05) increased technical inefficiency in hybrid chicken. This study recommends the County Government to target investments in research, extension services, and access to cost effective inputs for chicken farming, which are crucial for enhancing their productivity and efficiency.

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