One Small Step THE YEAR OF THE HORSE 2014 ALSO YEAR OF ‘MANOK PiNOY

By Manny Pinol

The Year of the Horse 2014 will also be the year when the newly-developed Philippine chicken breed, Manok PiNoy, will be introduced to Filipinos who prefer the taste of the free-range and naturally reared backyard chicken.

Four years after it was accidentally developed in the Braveheart Farms in Barangay Paco, Kidapawan City, North Cotabato, the new Philippine backyard chicken strain has passed the tests undertaken which mostly focused on its taste, weight gain, and conformity to the Philippine native chicken standards in body conformation and muscle strands.

The Manok PiNoy was bred based on my experience in the breeding of gamefowls where we cross a power and game strain like the Hatch, to the high-breaking and stylish Bates Greys to produce a high-breaking, stylish but game and powerful fighting rooster which could win in the pit.

The Manok PiNoy was bred based on my experience in the breeding of gamefowls where we cross-breed a power and game strain like the Hatch, to the high-breaking and stylish Bates Grey to produce a high-breaking, stylish but game and powerful fighting rooster which could win in the pit.

In developing the Manok PiNoy, I placed premium on the breed’s ability to grow to commercial size consuming only locally available feed materials, except for the imported Soya, and totally without synthetic feed ingredients commonly used in most commercial feeds today.

In the experiment which we conducted, Manok PiNoy could be raised by the ordinary farming family in the countryside because it could grow to market size using available feed materials like corn, rice bran, copra meal and even root crops commonly found in the hinterlands.

More importantly, the Manok PiNoy possesses the distinct firm meat and long muscle strands found in the so-called Philippine native chicken preferred by litson manok and chicken barbecue lovers.

But unlike the local mongrel chicken which takes six months to grow to a weight of over 1 kilo, Manok PiNoy could attain the marketable weight of 1.2 to 1.5 kilos in 75 to 90 days.

It also has a more robust body which carries more meat than the mongrel backyard chicken.

Manok PiNoy is expected to be launched in February, in time with the foundation anniversary of the City of Kidapawan which will soon be known as the Home of the Manok PiNoy because it is in the city where the new Philippine backyard chicken strain was developed.

Due to the small number of hens used in the breeding program, Manok PiNoy will be available in limited volume starting the Summer of 2014 with the initial production to be delivered to Native Chicken specialty restaurants like Davao City’s Conching’s and commercial outlets like the KMCC in Kidapawan City and James Gaisano’s Gaisano Grand.

A small volume will also be made available to the local native chicken barbecue restaurants and stalls in Kidapawan City, which has earned the reputation of being the native chicken barbecue capital of Mindanao because of its tasty barbecue offered by the roadside at night.

The Year 2014 will mark the first small step of this new Philippine backyard chicken breed as it enters the food market.

But hopefully, with God’s grace, Manok PiNoy will make giant strides in the years to come and attain the goal of providing the Filipinos with a locally developed chicken breed, raised in the free-range and grown with natural and chemical-free feeds and giving the consumers healthy food.