Superior Native Chicken: 10 years in the making and still counting

RB Sugbo is in the process of developing a native chicken for eating and for fighting. It is called Habagat. The technique we used is Return Breeding as discussed in my previous blog.

In creating the Habagat, it took us two years to conceptualize, four years before we came up with what was tantamount to a Proof of Concept Prototype. Another four years before we were ready with Farmers Experience Prototype. In the case of the Habagat we wanted to add size and enhance fighting capability.

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.

First there was the cross breeding between the SS and the DS. We had three groups of SS x DS, each group consisting of several sets of matings. We had the center group and the left and right wing groups. All the original matings in each of the groups, had the Subject Strain, Manok Bisaya on one side. The other side were the different Donor Strains.

Therefore the first generations or F1s were all half Manok Bisaya. But the other half were of different breeds each intended to contribute specific desired traits. The left wing provided size, the right week extreme fighting ability. The center is the balance between size and fighting traits.

Then we did the back breeding to Manok Bisaya. In the 2nd generation all were ¾ Manok Bisaya 1/4 the donor breeds. From this generation we selected the individuals that can serve best the purpose of their group to be used for further back breeding to the Manok Bisaya. In most cases we start stabilizing at ¾ Manok Bisaya, in substantial number of cases we went up to 7/8. There were even rare cases when we went up as high as 15/16 Manok Bisaya.

Once a certain mating in a group is considered practically stable enough, then it can be mated with other stable matings from another group to produce a well-balanced Habagat. These matings will then graduate to the stages of further stabilization of traits.

The process involves upgrading—the cross breeding with an upgrader or donor breed; then back breeding to the subject strain; then intra-group matings applying positive assortative selection; and finally inter-group matings to stabilize the desired traits of taste, size, fighting availability and survivability at the free range.

It may be interesting to note that most of intra-group matings were between 7/8s Manok Bisaya or 7/8MB x ¾ MB. Stability starts to manifest when a mating go past the ¾ mark.

So, definitely, creating the RBS Habagat was not easy.

Habagat is not a cross, not a hybrid, not a foreign breed infused with a little native chicken blood. It is a predominantly native chicken that is superior to ordinary native chickens in size and fighting capability. Habagat is a native chicken infused with the desired traits, but not dominated by genetic influence of the donor strains, because most of the genetic influence of the donor strains were bred-out, except those of the desired traits.

It took us ten years to come up with the Farmers’ Experience Prototype, and perhaps many more years to completely stabilize its traits. Except for its size and fighting capability, the Habagat is just native chicken. A product of Return Breeding System.

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