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Dr. A. H. Ramlah
This is a reply to Dr. Asifo O. Ajuyah's query (see Comment 1 on the Lead paper 5).
1. According to Abenes (1996), number 2 in the reference list, the population is 95.5 billion.
2. The village fowls in Malaysia are generally considered an adulterated descendant of the original indigenous South-east Asian fowl. Most of the birds that are reared in the rural households in the eastern part of peninsular Malaysia (Kelantan, Terengganu, Pahang states) are black or white in colour (female) and gold, red, brown and black (male), and in the southern and central parts of peninsular Malaysia (Johore, Selangor, Perak states) are mainly gold, brown and yellow (female) and gold, black and red (male).
The studies reported by the authors cited in my paper are mainly the brown, red and yellow varieties. The chicks used in the studies are obtained by buying the eggs from the villagers and incubating the eggs.
To answer question 2, in term of comparison of the performances of the village fowls to their predecessors, such a comparison is difficult to report as the birds were obtained from the villagers which normally do not carry out a systematic breeding of these village chickens.
One study by Engku Azahan and Noraziah (1996) reported mortality for the village chickens and the crossbreds (village chicken males X French country chicken females), as follows:
village chickens: 9.7% (1-10 weeks of age), 12.2% (1-16 weeks)
crossbreds: 7.2% (1-10 weeks of age), 11.1% (1-16 weeks)
and other studies as follows:
crossbreds: 6.5% (1-12 weeks) (Noraziah and Engku Azahan, 1997)
village chickens: 21.5% (1-15 weeks) (Jalaludin et al., 1985)
We (Ramlah and Kassim, 1992) had done a study comparing the four varieties of village chicken and the mortalities and egg production from age 22-54 weeks were as follows:
Mortality, in %: Light Brown 25.6, Black 29.7, White 26.1 and Dark Brown 33.8
Egg Production, in %: Light Brown 19.2, Black 21.6, White 17.4 and Dark Brown 20.4
Liveweight, in kg (22 weeks): Light Brown 1.35, Black 1.31, White 1.30 and Dark Brown 1.68
Liveweight, in kg (54 weeks): Light Brown 1.73, Black 1.47, White 1.42 and Dark Brown 1.68
I agree with you that we should do selection within and across the local population (village chicken) instead of crossbreeding, since the variation within the village chickens is very large and until a time when the variance is small and then only we go for crossbreeding.
References:
Abenes, M.V. (1996) Philippines: Country Report. Proceedings of the Ninth Asean Seminar on Poultry Diseases and their Control: Poultry husbandry, hygiene and drug therapy, pp.30-38.
Engku Azahan, E.A and Noraziah, M. (1996) Efficiency of feed utilisation for growth in the improved kampung chicken. Proc. Silver Jubilee MSAP Conference, Kuching, pp. 275-276.
Jalaludin, S, S. Sivarajasingam and B.T. Oh (1985) Some breed characteristics of the kampung chicken. Proceedings of the Regional Seminar on future developments in poultry industry, Kuala Lumpur, pp. 43-45.
Noraziah, M. and Engku Azahan, E.A (1997) Rearing kampung chicken crosses semi-intensively. Proc. 19th. MSAP Ann. Conf. Johor Bharu, pp. 110-111.
Ramlah, A.H. and H. Kassim (1992) Production performance of village chicken. In: Proceedings of the National IRPA Seminar, Vol. 2, pp 496-497.
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