Lueyang black-boned chicken sells at a high price with good market returns
The black-boned chicken, also known as the Wushan chicken or silky fowl (Gallus domesticus), is an omnivorous domesticated bird. It originated from Wushan in Taihe County, Jiangxi Province, China. There, it has been raised for more than 2,000 years. Not only are its beak, eyes and feet black, but its skin, muscles, bones and most of its internal organs are black as well. In terms of nutritional value, the black-boned chicken far surpasses ordinary chickens, and its texture when eaten is also very tender. As for its medicinal and dietary-therapy effects, ordinary chickens cannot compare with it at all, and people call it the “precious rare bird for dietary therapy.”
The black-boned chicken has a peculiar appearance. A typical black-boned chicken has ten major characteristics: a mulberry-shaped comb, a tasseled head, green ears, a beard, silky feathers, five claws, feathered legs, black skin, black flesh and black bones, and it enjoys the reputation of being "ten complete." According to historical records, China's black-boned chickens were divided into white-feathered, black-feathered and speckled-feathered types, but only the white silky-feathered black-boned chicken from the area of Taihe in Jiangxi, its place of origin, has been preserved over the long term; the latter two types gradually disappeared over the course of history. The Black Phoenix black-boned chicken currently raised in China was developed through directed breeding and selection from black-feathered black-boned chickens introduced from abroad that had not been purified. It has ten characteristics: black silky feathers, black skin, black bones, black flesh, a clustered comb, a phoenix crest, green ears, a beard, feathered legs and five claws, and it is named “Black Phoenix black-boned chicken” because it resembles a phoenix.
Traditional Chinese medicine holds that: “Black tonifies the kidney, the kidney is the foundation of innate constitution, and the source of life is secured in the kidney,” and “black foods can strengthen the foundation and support the vital energy, nourish the skin and beautify the complexion, strengthen the body and prolong life.” Modern science shows that black foods are rich and balanced in nutrition, reasonable in structure, and contain abundant unsaturated fatty acids, vitamins and trace elements, as well as melanin, which has special regulatory functions in the human body. China's Black Phoenix black-boned chicken not only has firm meat that does not fall apart when stewed, but also contains more melanin than soft-shelled turtle and the white silky-feathered black-boned chicken, and it enjoys the reputation of “nourishing better than soft-shelled turtle, healing injuries better than white pigeon, and beautifying the complexion like pearl.”
The Shaanxi Lueyang Heihe black-boned chicken is an excellent local breed. Because it is distributed in the Heihe River basin in the depths of the Qinling Mountains within the county, where the mountains are high and the forests deep, the river water clear and free of pollution, and the ecological environment beautiful, and because of special ecological factors, this area became the birthplace of the Lueyang black-boned chicken. In 2008, the Lueyang black-boned chicken geographical indication product was approved by the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine of the People's Republic of China, and it also passed the first organic food certification in Hanzhong, Shaanxi.
First: Lueyang black-boned chicken has high nutritional value, and its price is high as well.
The Lueyang black-boned chicken is one of the four major black-boned chicken breeds in the country, and compared with other black-boned chickens it has a very notable characteristic, namely the six blacks. First: the comb and wattles are black; second: the beak, that is, the mouth, is black; third: the chicken's tongue is black; fourth: the skin is black; fifth: the chicken's legs are black; sixth: the toes are black. Having these six blacks shows that its quality is relatively good, and the black tongue and black toes also show that its internal organs are black, indicating that its nutritional value is very high.
Medical practice has proven that “black foods” are not only rich in nutrition, but most of them also have unique effects such as tonifying qi deficiency, preventing aging, preventing and treating disease, and darkening the hair and beautifying the complexion. The Lueyang black-boned chicken has the characteristic of being completely black in six parts, and is a typical black food, so it is very popular on the market.
At the largest farmers' market in Lueyang county town, there are three shops selling live chickens, yet the reporter could not find a single black-boned chicken with the six-black characteristics there. According to the sellers, this is because purebred Lueyang black-boned chickens are expensive and do not sell well, so most of the black-boned chickens sold on the local market are not pure Lueyang black-boned chickens. Even so, these red-combed, impure black-boned chickens still sell for 12 yuan per jin, while ordinary chickens sell for only 10 yuan per jin. So what exactly is the price of a genuine Lueyang black-boned chicken? A Lueyang black-boned chicken can grow to more than 4 jin in 5 months, at which point it can be marketed, and the market price is 18-20 yuan per jin, which means one chicken can sell for about 80 yuan. According to Zhang Huijun, head of the Shaanxi Lueyang Black-boned Chicken Breeding and Hatching Center, black-boned chickens that retain the six-black characteristics and have black feathers are the highest in quality and the highest in price; compared with black-boned chickens with mixed-colored feathers, the price per kilogram is at least 10 yuan higher. Moreover, most restaurants buy precisely this kind of black-boned chicken, whose comb and feather color are both black.
It is true that the Lueyang black-boned chicken with the six blacks plus black feathers has the best appearance and sells for the highest price. But because for a long time Lueyang black-boned chickens were mostly raised free-range by farming households and kept mixed and crossbred with other chickens, the breed gradually degenerated, and the phenomenon appeared that black-boned chickens were no longer six-black. Starting in 2005, Lueyang County made efforts to implement a purification and selective breeding project for Lueyang black-boned chickens, focusing on breeding black-feathered black-boned chickens, so that the rate of “six-black” quality gradually increased. Now the quality rate of the six-black characteristic has reached 85%-90%; six blacks plus black feathers should be seven blacks, and with the quality improved, the price naturally rose.