This paper aims to describe the pattern and compare the egg production of conservation flocks of seven traditional Hungarian chicken breeds: Yellow Hungarian (YH), White Hungarian (WH), Speckled Hungarian (SH), Partridge coloured Hungarian (PH), White Transylvanian Naked Neck (WT), Black Transylvanian Naked Neck (BT) and Speckled Transylvanian Naked Neck (ST). Data were collected at the Research Centre for Farm Animal Gene Conservation (HáGK). It was observed that egg production was comparably high in WH and YH and low in ST. The Transylvanian hens produced fewer eggs during wintertime than the other groups. The eggproducing pattern of hens hatched in spring showed similarity with two main hills in most of the breeds. The significant difference between the 1st and the 2nd laying periods was found only in SH, WH, ST, and BT chicken breeds. The ST and BT hens produced significant higher number of eggsday during the 2nd laying period than during the 1st one (0.306 vs. 0.416, p < 0.050 and 0.319 vs. 0.379, p < 0.050 respectively). Meanwhile, the SH and WH hens laid a significantly lower number of eggs during the secondlaying period than during the firstlaying period (0.459 vs. 0.386, p < 0.050 and 0.427 vs. 0.384, p < 0.050 respectively). Understanding the egg production of these traditional chicken breeds may help to improve the utilization and involvement of not only the Hungarian chicken breeds with better performance but also all the other breeds efficiently in family farming, as well as the other sustainable agricultural production systems.
Europ.Poult.Sci., 78 2014, ISSN 1612-9199, © Verlag Eugen Ulmer, Stuttgart DOI: 10.1399/eps.2014.XX Europ.Poult.Sci., 78 2014, ISSN 1612-9199, © Verlag Eugen Ulmer, Stuttgart DOI: 10.1399/eps.2014.XX Egg production profiles of seven traditional Hungarian chicken breeds Verlauf der Legeleistung bei sieben einheimischen ungarischen Hühnerrassen T.N Lan Phuong, I Barta, L Bódi, K.D.T Dong Xuan, J.N Kovács, T.R Ferencz and I.T Szalay Research Centre for Farm Animal Gene Conservation (HáGK); Association of Hungarian Small Animal Breeders for Gene Conservation (MGE) Correspondence: LanPhuong.ThieuNgoc@katki.hu Manuscript received 24 July 2014, accepted October 2014 Introduction Family poultry production, the sector in which local farmers and the rural population can be easily involved by both st scientific and economic approaches, still has a major importance in the 21 century, primarily in the underprivileged regions of developing countries (GUÉYE, 2000; ALDERS and PYM, 2009) Also, the native, traditional chicken breeds are accepted as potential materials that may clue family farming to genetic conservation programmes In general, they contribute in many different ways to sustainable agricultural production (GUÉYE, 2002; HODGES, 2006; BODÓ and SZALAY, 2007; DONG XUAN and SZALAY, 2007; MTILENI et al., 2012) Until the beginning of commercial chicken breeding, the local chicken breeds of different colours (white, speckled, yellow and partridge and naked neck variants) had been wide-spread in Hungary They were preferred not only for their relatively good egg production under harsh conditions, but also for their excellent meat quality which come from the “seeking habit” of the birds, scratching for food regardless of hot or cold weather (BALDY, 1954) At the beginning of 1960 s, the breeding programmes and production of local breeds were replaced by commercial chicken hybrids It resulted in fast decrease of the population number of old Hungarian chicken breeds Meanwhile, Transylvanian Naked Neck breeds became endangered even earlier (BODÓ et al., 1990) Since 1973, all breeds and colour variants have been maintained as official gene reserves (SZALAY, 2002; SZALAY et al., 2009) In Hungary, native/old chicken breeds are registered by the MGE (an official breeding organisation for old Hungarian poultry bred in Hungary) and kept by Hungarian academic institutions and universities as in situ gene banks (SZALAY, 2002; SPALONA et al., 2007; SZALAY et al., 2009) These breeds include Yellow Hungarian Chicken (YH), White Hungarian Chicken (WH), Speckled Hungarian Chicken (SH), Partridge-colour Hungarian Chicken (PH), White Transylvanian Naked Neck Chicken (WT), Black Transylvanian Naked Neck Chicken (BT) and Speckled Transylvanian Naked Neck Chicken (ST) Conservationists claim that utilization of the local farm animal genetic resources in production must be one of the major concerns of conservation, for which many characteristics, including production and reproduction traits of the conserved populations should be monitored and well documented (HENSON, 1992; TIXIER-BOICHARD et al., 2009) Nonetheless, very few studies about egg production characteristics of traditional Hungarian chicken breeds have been published during the “conservation era”, and none of them describes and compares the egg production profiles of the breeds This paper, therefore, aims to describe the pattern and compare the egg production of seven traditional Hungarian chicken breeds conserved at the gene bank of the Research Centre for Farm Animal Gene Conservation (HáGK), located in Gödöllő, Hungary Understanding the egg production profile of these traditional breeds may help to improve the utilization of all the breeds in sustainable agriculture and rural development 02.12.2014 1/9 Europ.Poult.Sci., 78 2014, ISSN 1612-9199, © Verlag Eugen Ulmer, Stuttgart DOI: 10.1399/eps.2014.XX Material and methods All data presented in this paper was recorded from native/old Hungarian chicken breeds, including YH, WH, SH, PH, WT, BT and ST, which hatched from in vivo gene bank nucleus flocks, collected from 2008 to 2012 In order to determine the egg production profiles of seven breeds, different examinations were carried out The first one took place in 2008–2010, in which the whole set of data of egg production obtained in the first-laying period of the breeds was studied in two subsequent generations (2008/2009 and 2009/2010) The second examination took place in 2010 –2012, in which the egg production of two subsequent laying periods (from January to June) of the same flocks hatched in 2010 were compared All the hens were kept under the same conditions with daytime access to open air and treated with the same diet As all nucleus flocks were hatched in May, egg production of the flocks started in late autumn and proceeded until the middle of summer, which is the usual pattern for natural backyard poultry Therefore, birds produced eggs in the wintertime too Consequently, no lighting and heating regimes were applied throughout the egg production The female/male ratio of each group was 7:1, according to the conservation rules of MGE (SZALAY et al., 2009) Statistical analyses All data were processed by the version 20.0 of SPSS Calculated egg/hen/day recorded in the first-laying period of seven groups (breeds) was analysed by Levene‘s test and Kruskal-Wallis test Levene's test is used to assess the equality of variances The Kruskal-Wallis test is a non-parametric test It was performed on ranked data and assumed that the observations in each group come from populations with the same shape of the distribution (IBM CORP, 2011) Paired-sample T-test was used to determine whether there is a significant difference between the average values of egg production in the two subsequent laying periods of each breed Results The number of eggs/hen/collecting period and eggs/hen/day was consistently high in WH and YH breeds, and consistently low in ST chicken breed (Table 1) All hens of the breeds, hatched in May, started to lay eggs in October, and ended in June of the following year Interestingly, in 2009–2010, most of the breeds, apart from the ST chicken, showed similar egg producing pattern over the laying period (Figure 1) It was observed that the laying cycle of these breeds was divided into two sub-periods, in which the number of eggs increased till a particular value and then dropped, which resulted in the formation of a 2-hill appearance The trend line of ST chicken breed showed only one peak in April-May with a steep increase, starting from December All the Transylvanian hens tended to produce much fewer eggs during wintertime (October-February) than the other groups (Figure 1) The difference between egg production during winter and spring was not clearly demonstrated in YH, SH, WH and PH chicken breeds 02.12.2014 2/9 Europ.Poult.Sci., 78 2014, ISSN 1612-9199, © Verlag Eugen Ulmer, Stuttgart DOI: 10.1399/eps.2014.XX Table Egg production of traditional Hungarian chicken breeds in 2008–2009 and 2009–2010 Legeleistung von traditionellen ungarischen Hühnerrassen in den Jahren 2008–2009 und 2009–2010 Year 2008–2009 2009–2010 Breed* Number of egg collecting days Eggs/hen/ collecting period** Eggs/hen/ day*** p value of eggs/hen/day YH 220 100.18 0.455b