Computer Science Project Topics

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1. Background Of The Study

Reliable information is the foundation of sound management and should be the basis upon which government policies are formulated and development priorities are established. Unfortunately this is not always the case in practice. The need for an impartial, objective and comprehensive assessment of Nigeria's livestock resources has long been recognized, but until recently the subject had remained a matter of debate and conjecture rather than one of concerted effort and coordinated field inquiry.

Poultry embraces the hunting, domesticating, keeping and raising of buds for purposes including meat and egg production intended for human consumption. Birds such as domestic fowl, turkey, duck, geese, pheasants, guinea fowl and others have been domesticated and their meat and eggs produced in commercial quantities. The poultry industry sprang up with the advent of the establishment of large poultry farms which produced far more eggs than can be adequately sold locally. Subsequently came more efficient strains or breeds of buds, highly balanced feeds, intensive housing and better poultry equipments to boost poultry production (Oluyemi and Roberts, 1979).

1.1. Statement Of Problem

In the past, official livestock population figures were derived indirectly and extrapolated from various administrative sources, including jangali cattle tax receipts, vaccination returns, slaughter records, trade movements and exports. The information itself was frequently out of date, inaccurate and/or incomplete and yielded population estimates of considerable uncertainty that related only to a few of the many livestock species kept. Such figures should obviously be treated with caution (Colville and Shaw, 1950; Fricke, 1979), but this is rarely reflected in official publications. More recently, further doubt has been cast on the validity of livestock statistics by the pervasive impact of human population growth and agricultural...