The real Philippine chicken is for eating and for fighting
The Native Chicken is the supposed King of the Free Range. But due to lack of real profit in raising native chickens, farmers settle for other types as compromise material for free range chicken farming in the Philippines.
And native chicken is supposed to be our fighting chicken, but when the American Game, which is much better fighter, came, we discarded the native chicken as fighters.
But what if we can develop a strain of native chicken that can provide real profit to farmers because it is bigger with more meat to sell and better fighter that it can also be sold as gamecock?
Thus, in the past 10 years or so RB Sugbo Gamefowl Technology has been developing a multi purpose native chicken strain—for meat, egg and for fighting. This new strain should be bigger, better layer and better fighter than ordinary Philippine Native Chicken.
Our dedication to enhancing the Philippine Native Chicken started in 2006. After a couple of years of conceptualizing we came up with the idea of ‘Return Breeding,’ and we officially started formal research and development.
In 2012, The City of Naga, Cebu helped and allowed collaboration with its Office of the City Agriculturist. Habagat was then still called an all-purpose chicken. In 2013, the project, particularly the organic/probiotics component was subject of study papers by students at Cebu Technical University--Argao Campus.
Thanks to these entities’ collaborations, now after eight years of R&D, we are ready with a commercially viable Farmer Experience Prototype (FEP) of the Habagat. (More about the Habagat)
Among the first would-be recipients of these FEPs would be farmer groups that were beneficiaries of a government program. Afterwards, we would make the Habagat available to the public.
In 2017, Habagat raising was also made part of a community development program of Cebu Technical University -Argao Campus in the mountain barangays of Argao, Cebu.
We devised a breeding procedure that started with upgrading followed by increment back breeding, and finished with a series of positive assortative mating. This process, which we call ‘Return Breeding,’ has the objective of upgrading but the procedure resembles more of the technique of infusion.
The product is the “Habagat Superior Native Chicken,” a bred-back to the Philippine Native Chicken but bigger, better layer and better fighter. Enhancements in these valuable traits were gained without sacrifing the nutritional quality of meat and eggs, and the feature of having better resistance to local diseases associated with the native chicken.
Moreover, high profitability is expected from the fighting component of the strategy. Thus, this is an opportunity unique to Philippine setting due to the fact that cockfighting is legal in the country and the game fowl industry is sizable.
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