The income from poultry production accounts for 32.5% of the total household income. Another report estimates that 84%-85% of the households in the Northeast and Northwest of Vietnam use that system. In local breeds of broilers, chickens are slaughtered at around five to six months of age, except for a small proportion of hens that are kept for laying until two years of age. For laying hens, the proportions are 43.3%, and 56.7%, respectively. The remaining 76.9% is made up of native chickens or chickens obtained by crossing local and exotic chickens. Industrial broilers represent 23.1% of the total Vietnamese chicken population. In this system, households usually keep 5–50 heads per household. This represents 92% of the households raising chicken. For all these breeds, 7.3 million households use the backyard chicken farming system. Another report from FAO even states that 28 indigenous chicken breeds are present in this country, but without listing these breeds. Vietnam has 14 indigenous chicken breeds, including Ri, Te, Tau Vang, Ac, Oke, H’mong, Tre, Choi, Phu Luu Te, To, Dan Khao, Mia, Ho and Dong Tao breed. Vietnam is one of the chicken domestication centres and still has a rich genetic diversity of poultry breeds. In that context, indigenous chicken breeds could be a rich genetic resource, able to provide solutions to problems eventually arising in selected chicken lines. Intensively raised chicken breeds could show weaknesses in their ability to adapt to global warming, to emerging diseases and to complex changes in consumers demand. The rapid development of intensive poultry companies, not only leads to reductions in the number of indigenous chicken breeds, but also increases the dependence on commercial chicken lines production. This trend could be particularly damaging for small-scale poultry breeders or livestock farmers in poor countries. According to an FAO report, 60 of the 1729 breeds identified worldwide are extinct, 154 are critically endangered, 214 are endangered and 1089 have an unknown conservation status. However, in the long term, this intensive poultry farming, using only high-yielding hybrid lines, is a serious threat to the genetic diversity of poultry breeds in the world because of the replacement of local breeds by these productive exotic breeds. Intensive poultry farming provides protein to the human population at a very large scale, especially in growing urban areas. Nowadays, because of improvements in the intensive farming systems, the poultry production has developed rapidly worldwide. At the local scale, indigenous chicken populations have a significant contribution to household production, especially for low income farmers in Asia, Africa and the South Pacific. Moreover, their short production cycle is another important advantage, making them a major source of animal protein for humans and providing diverse products for human consumption. Chickens can adapt easily to various environmental conditions due to their small size, reduced needs and ability to find feed and water for themselves. Since then, humans have depended a lot on it. The study demonstrates the need to find ways to improve the production and reproduction performances of these animals, in order to contribute to the program of conservation and exploitation of these two breeds.ĭomestication of poultry started about 8000 years ago. In summary, the production performances of Ho and Dong Tao chickens were low, even when birds were fed a commercial diet. The eggs production and number of embryonated eggs were low for the two breeds when compared to other breeds, with a lower hatching performance in Ho than in Dong Tao. Yield, carcass composition and meat quality differed between the two studied breeds. Slaughter age proved to affect several carcass yield characteristics, showing that slaughtering between 16 and 20 weeks might be better than at the usual age of 28 weeks. Feed conversion ratios were also similar, and demonstrated the low efficiency of these two breeds when compared to commercial broilers. The growth patterns were similar for the two breeds. We investigated egg laying and egg quality using 36 Ho and 32 Dong Tao hens during 52 weeks of laying. In a survey, we continuously recorded for 28 weeks, the data on the production performance and meat quality of 250 chicks from each breed. The objective of this work was the evaluation of the meat production and laying performances, and the meat and egg quality of two breeds of Vietnamese broiler chickens, Ho and Dong Tao, fed on a commercial diet.
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