Return Breeding: New way of enhancing native chicken
The common strategy in improving native chicken is to cross native chicken with another breed, say Kabir, if developing an improved meat type chicken, or the American Game, if developing a better game fowl. This is upgrading.
They call the result of upgrading improved native chicken. But actually it is no longer native chicken but a cross or F1 hybrid between native chicken and the introduced breed. Then they breed back to the introduced breed to further improve size or fighting ability producing a generation which is 3/4 the new breed and 1/4 native chicken. Still they call it upgraded native chicken when in fact it is no longer native chicken but another breed of chicken infused with 1/4 native chicken. Then they go further up to 7/8 or 15/16, so the produce might be bigger or better fighter but it is no longer native chicken.
The influence of native chicken is diluted to practically nothing. It’s no longer native chicken, not even improved nor upgraded native chicken because it is not a native chicken anymore. For a bloodline to still qualify as native chicken, the proportion of the native blood should be more than that of any other bloodline in the blend.
Return Breeding also involves infusion and the subsequent breeding back. Surprisingly, however, the breeding back procedure, is not to the upgrader breed, but rightly to the native chicken. Because, we are after developing a new native chicken, not merely infusing native chicken blood into a foreign breed.
In the technique we call Return Breeding, there is a Subject Strain (SS), the original strain that we will return to. Then there is a Donor Strain (DS), the strain that will contribute the desired additional traits. And finally, the Object Strain (OS), the strain as result of the process.
The Subject Strain in our case is the Manok Bisaya (MB), a PNC strain of the Bankiva type, like the Darag, Banaba and Camarines strains, not the Malayoid type of native chicken, like the Jolo and Paraokan. MB is the chicken indigenous to a number of provinces in the Visayas.
MB is a chicken with tasty meat and also with some fighting capabilities.
Our object is a strain of native chicken that is bigger, better layer and better fighter that we would call Habagat. So we got to have a DS that would introduce these traits to the SS to come up with the OS. In the case of Habagat we had more than one DS.
Return Breeding is like upgrading, but the breed back process is the reverse. Instead of breeding back to the upgrader breed, we breed back to the breed to be upgraded, the native chicken, until we attain a generation that is genetically predominant if not practical pure of the native chicken. But, at the same time, possessing the desired traits of the donor strain or donor breed.
Breeding back to the upgrader strain will easily get you the desired traits such as size or fast growth, but the process will also get rid of the beneficial traits of the native chicken such as flavour and adaptability to free range and scavenging. In case of fighting ability, it will rid of some excellent native chicken traits such as far out-reach-cutting, speed and smarts.
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