A grand overview of China's top ten famous chickens: which breed is the most expensive?
Chickens are a common kind of poultry we see. In rural areas, every household raises chickens, but there are also quite a few chicken breeds, and depending on the region, the breeds raised vary. Affected by pork prices, chicken prices have also risen, farming profits have increased, and farmers have been choosing suitable breeds to raise. So what are China's top ten famous chickens? Which breed is the most expensive?
1. Guinea fowl
Guinea fowl, also known as the pearl hen, pearl bird or Guinea bird, belongs to the order Galliformes, family Numididae, and originated in Guinea on the west coast of the African continent. It was originally a wild bird, with feathers covered in countless tiny white spots, just as if its whole body were draped in white pearls, and its shape resembles a female peacock, with a very small head. Its beak is strong and pointed, pale yellow at the tip and red at the rear, and below the beak there is a red wattle on each side. There is no feathering around the eyes, and a ring of white markings extends straight down to the neck. The neck is slender and covered with a ring of purple-blue needle-like feathers. The tail feathers are longer and droop down. Because of its beautiful feathers and elegant posture, it has long been kept as a rare ornamental bird in zoos around the world.
2. Princess chicken
The Princess chicken, also known as the Lady chicken, originated with the British royal family. It wears a phoenix crest on its head and is clad in black-and-white speckled feathers, naturally beautiful, and was named "Princess chicken" by the British royal family, kept exclusively for court viewing and imperial use, with private breeding forbidden. It combines ornamental value, food value and tonic value in one, has a strong gamey flavor and is rich in nutrients; its meat is tender, rich but not greasy, and delicious, containing 17 kinds of amino acids needed by the human body, more than 10 kinds of trace elements and multiple vitamins. In particular, its content of selenium and zinc, known as the kings of anti-cancer elements, is 3 to 5 times that of ordinary poultry, making it the most ideal rare poultry for therapeutic diets today, hailed as "brain-boosting meat", "beauty meat" and "longevity meat".
3. Xinghua chicken
Also called "rice chick", it has a well-proportioned build and a sturdy constitution, with a narrow front and a broad rear. Its body characteristics can be summed up as two fine (fine head, fine feet), three yellow (yellow feathers, yellow skin, yellow shanks) and three short (short neck, short body, short feet). Chicks are mainly three-yellow, with the whole body covered in light yellow down.
4. Silkie
Silkie chicken is black-boned chicken, and black-boned chicken is also a fairly common breed in China. Black-boned chickens are further divided into white-feathered, black-feathered and other varieties. Black-boned chicken has very high nutritional value, containing many amino acids essential to the human body. Its carotene, vitamin C and other nutrients also rank among the highest, and it also contains various trace elements, giving it a very high health-promoting effect on the human body.
5. Green-shell laying chicken
The green-shell laying chicken is a breed that lays eggs with green shells. Chickens that lay green eggs are rare, but the green-shell laying chicken is not the only one that can lay green eggs. Its characteristics are five black and one green, namely black feathers, black skin, black meat, black bones and black internal organs, and even more unusual is that the eggs it lays are green, combining natural black food and green food in one, a rare supreme delicacy among rare poultry in the world.
6. Qingyuan partridge chicken
Qingyuan partridge chicken is the most common chicken breed on chicken farms in Guangdong. This chicken is characterized by faster growth and rapid fattening, and is widely favored by large chicken farms in the south, making a fortune for one group of chicken farmers after another. Qingyuan partridge chickens are generally raised by farmers mainly by group free-range stocking in enclosed plots; they have a strong appetite and good disease resistance, their meat is delicious, and they also adapt well to cage rearing, so they are also popular among ordinary people in the south.
7. Huaixiang chicken
Huaixiang chicken originates from Huaixiang town, Xinyi city, under the administration of Maoming city, Guangdong province, and is also called Xinyi chicken or Zhanjiang chicken. Huaixiang chicken is a meat-type breed, with full muscles and tender, smooth meat, possessing the characteristics of the three-yellow chicken (yellow feathers, yellow skin, yellow feet). In 1985 it was included in the "Guangdong Province Livestock and Poultry Breed Record" and officially became a famous chicken breed of Guangdong province. After the 1980s, due to the development of the breeding industry, its main production area spread throughout Xinyi. "Xinyi Huaixiang chicken" has now been approved and registered by the State Administration for Industry and Commerce as a certificate-of-origin trademark.
8. Jianghan chicken
Jianghan chicken is an excellent breed developed in Hanchuan over three hundred years. It originates from the Chai chicken of the Jianghan Plain in Hubei province and is a fine local breed. Since the reform and opening up, under the guidance of local poultry experts, through directional selection and breeding and restoration and strengthening of purity, the dual-purpose meat-and-egg characteristics of this breed have been further developed and optimized. Jianghan chicken is a dual-purpose meat-and-egg breed. It has the characteristics of strong adaptability, tolerance of coarse feed, and tender, delicious meat.
9. Chai chicken
Chai chicken has the longest breeding history of any chicken breed in China and is also the breed that best represents the native chicken. Chai chickens have very strong tolerance of coarse feed and adaptability. Therefore they are relatively simple to raise, require relatively little investment, and have a fairly high egg production. Their meat is no worse than that of other breeds, making them very suitable for small-scale household raising in rural areas.
10. Common moorhen
The common moorhen is actually both a kind of bird and a kind of chicken, and is a relatively precious kind of chicken in China. The common moorhen differs somewhat in appearance from ordinary domestic chickens; the head, neck and back of the common moorhen are mostly black, and the feathers of the flight feathers and tail are brown. It is distributed all over the world and has relatively high farming returns.
The above is an introduction to China's top ten famous chickens. In fact, among the kinds above, the most expensive should be the wild common moorhen, which is a nationally protected animal, but in fact raising the breeds above all brings very considerable economic returns.
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