In the last days of April, we had the opportunity to visit the wild chicken farm of Mr. Pham Van Truc’s family (63 years old, Quang Hop commune, Quang Trach district, Quang Binh), located on a large hill with an area of thousands of acres. thousand square meters, this is also the place where he and his wife live.
While chatting and throwing food into the yard for the chickens, Mr. Truc called out a few times and dozens of adult wild chickens of all colors, gray, red, white… ran from the garden without the slightest fear of the people around them. around. Looking at the flock of wild chickens eating, Mr. Truc smiled and said: “Wild chickens have wild behavior, are very shy and afraid of people, but if domesticated, they are easy to raise like domestic chickens.”
It is known that Mr. Pham Van Truc worked as a police officer in Binh Tri Thien province (formerly) for more than 10 years. After discharge, he returned to his hometown and did all sorts of jobs to make a living and feed his children.
To have a flock of precious wild chickens like today is a fate. In his later years, he began to learn and develop a farming model to take advantage of the spacious garden and hill land, as well as earn additional income from the farm. experience old age.
Sharing about the opportunity to domesticate wild chickens, Mr. Pham Van Truc said that in the past, Hoanh Son mountain forests had many beautiful species of wild chickens that grew well, crowed very well, and were often paid very high prices by hobbyists. However, in recent years, the natural forest area has been increasingly narrowed, people hunt and trap a lot, so the crowing of wild chickens has become less frequent and completely absent from the Hoanh Son range.
Realizing that raising wild wild chickens is very suitable for the local terrain and climate, right in the garden with low hills and lots of weeds, it is a suitable condition for chickens to live. So, after many discussions with his wife, in 2021 he decided to buy natural chicken breeds from hunters in the area to domesticate and breed.
Mr. Truc said, the first days of raising wild chickens were quite difficult because wild chickens inherently have wild behavior and can fly like birds, so if they are not used to raising chickens, they can easily fly away or die after just a few days. Not giving up, he borrowed more capital and continued to buy chicken breeds to raise. After gaining experience from failures and learning techniques from many places, he built nets around him, planted more green vegetables in the garden so that the chickens could actively source food, and planted trees for them to perch and sleep. on branches as in the natural environment. Especially when feeding, regularly contact and caress the chicken to get used to people.
The adult wild chicken weighs only 1 – 1.2 kg, is tall, has a long body, small lead-colored legs and has long colorful feathers, its main food is grains such as corn, rice, rice… and vegetables, insects. This breed of chicken has high resistance, does not need much food, is healthy, has few diseases, and has firm, delicious meat. In addition to its commercial value, wild chickens are also ornamental.
“When purebred wild chickens lay a lot of eggs, they have good incubation ability, breed quickly, each hen lays 8-10 eggs per brood. After the eggs hatched, I separated the chicks and brought them to the chicken raising area for convenient monitoring and care until they grew strong tails and then brought them back to the garden. Each batch is raised for 10 – 12 months, and the chickens can be sold,” said Mr. Pham Van Truc.
After more than 3 years of domestication, his family’s flock of wild chickens has grown to 250 chickens. Currently, his chicken farm only sells adult chickens for breeding or ornamental purposes, with prices ranging from 1 – 2 million VND/bird. In addition to raising chickens, he also boldly borrowed more money to invest in raising 4 deer, 10 goats and 30 pigs. Estimated income is more than 100 million VND/year.
Talking to reporters, Chairman of Quang Hop Commune People’s Committee Bui Hai Luu said that Mr. Pham Van Truc’s household model of raising chickens, pigs, and deer is an advanced example in local economic development. Up to this point, it can be assessed that the model has been initially successful and brought high efficiency. Local authorities always encourage and create conditions for people to study and replicate models to develop agricultural economy in the area.
