Darag Native Chicken Farming

“Native chicken has the great potential of becoming a big industry,” words of Dr. Ricardo A.
Provido, a successful agricultural entrepreneur and the present chairman of the Regional Agricultural
and Fisheries Council (RAFC) Region VI, as he shared his experiences and marketing ideas in a
recent interview.

It’s the distinct taste of the Darag that makes it inimitable from the commercial breeds. He added that
the free-range management of native chicken made it possible for them to accumulate natural
nutrients directly from the soil which cultured broilers and layers do not acquire.

The Darag native chicken has already launched its name in the local markets and started to play
side by side with the commercial ones. Through the intervention of available technology, it has also
evolved into a more complex production process and marketing system.

Available resources for interested individuals are accessible, resulting to a greater market potential
and competitiveness.

“It’s about time that the Darag native chicken should be projected to the public as one of the region’s
flagship commodities,” Provido said. – thenewstoday.info
Background
Zoologically, the native chicken belongs to the genus Gallus of the family Phasianae. The domestic
chicken is simply called Gallus domesticus.

The wild ancestors of the domestic chicken probably originated in the South east Asia and four
species of these white jungle fowls are still known in the area. There are: Gallus gallus, the red
jungle fowl; Gallus layette, the Ceylones jungle fowl; Gallus sonnerati, the gray jungle fowl; and
Gallus various, the black or green jungle fown.

However, the red jungle fowl has the widest distribution of the wild species and may well be
the chief ancestor of the modern breeds.

Description
The early domesticated native chicken still resemble their wild ancestors in many characteristics.
The wild adult male has a shiny red plumage with light brown hackle and black tail feathers while the
female has flat yellowish-brownish pumage. The native chicken’s combs are of single type, and the
color of their shanks ranges from yellow to gray. The combined effects of mutation, natural selection,
selection for cockfighting, and the indiscriminate crossing with the exotics led to the evolution of the
so-called indigenous chickens.

Some of the Philippines native chickens that are raised in the backyard of many farmers in the rural
areas still resemble their wild ancestral type. They are nervous, flighty, but the female has string
maternal instincts. They are hardy and can reproduce and survive with minimal care and
management.

In the Philippines, native chickens constitute a large portion of the total chicken population. For many
years, these chickens have been part of the natural setting and provide additional sources of income
for so many rural farmers.

The Darag
Darag is a general term used of the Philippine native chicken strain indigenous to and most
dominant in Western Visayas. It evolve from the Red Jungle fowl.

The male locally called labuyo has red wing and hackle and black feathers and tail. The female, also
called Darag, is typically yellowish-brown.

The comb is single, the earlobe is whitish and the shank gray for both male and female. The
adult male weighs an average of 1.3 kg while the female weighs an average of 1.0 kg.