Study areas were selected from five Upazilas of three coastal districts namely Noakhali, Patuakhali and Satkhira. From each district, at least one Upazila was purposively selected as the study location considering the concentration of poultry rearing. The selected Upazilas were Hatia and Subornochar under Noakhali district, Kalapara under Patuakhali and Tala Upazila under Satkhira district. A total of 180 poultry farmers were interviewed for the collection of necessary data and information who were involved in native poultry rearing (60 farmers from each of the three districts). Purposive sampling technique was followed for selecting these respondents. Field survey method was followed to collect primary data for one year of operation. Data were collected from respondents by using semi-structured interview schedule. Secondary data and information were also collected and discussed for this research from different handouts, reports, publications, notifications, etc. For analyzing the data, a combination of tabular and mathematical techniques were used to achieve the objectives and to get the meaningful results. In addition, sensitivity analysis was used to assess the effects of adverse changes of the relevant factors. The multiple regression model was used to determine the effects of key variables. To identify the most important variables of poultry rearing, the following specification of the model was made: Y= a X1b1 X2b2 X3b3 X4b4 X5b5 X6b6 X7b7 X8b8 D1b9 D2b10 Ui. The model was transformed into following logarithmic form so that it could be estimated by the ordinary least squares (OLS) method:
ln Y= a b1 ln X1 + b2 ln X2 + b3 ln X3 + b4 ln X4 + b5 ln X5 + b6 ln X6 + b7 ln X7 +b8 ln X8 + b9 D1 +b10 D2 +Ui
Where, Y= Gross return (Tk. /Year); X1 =Age of the respondents; X2 =Year of schooling; X3 =Family size; X4 =Land holding; X5 =No. of livestock enterprises; X6 = Working hours; X7 = Rearing cost; X8 = Income from other sources; D1 = Training; D1 =1 if training received by the farmers, D1 =0 otherwise; D2 =Vaccine and medication; D2 =1 if vaccine and medication used by the farmers, D2 = 0 otherwise; In = Natural logarithm; a = Constant/intercept; b1, b2…..b10. Moreover, mathematical technique i.e., marginal value product (MVP) and marginal factor cost (MFC) comparison was done to measure efficiency/inefficiency of the resources used in rearing poultry.