The Iconic Image ‘MARIGA,’ THE RED MANOK PiNOY

By Manny Pinol

The joy of breeding is in being able to produce chicken which come in almost the same appearance and behavior.

Since I am personally handling the breeding of both my gamefowls and now this new dual purpose backyard chicken strain, Manok PiNoy, I could almost predict what the appearance of the chicks would be out of a certain mating.

All of the chicks from a certain breeding of solid lines would almost always come out like peas in a pod, looking almost the same as the other.

In breeding the Manok PiNoy, I have developed two lines – one which throws dark red to black pullets and stags and another line which produces light red to red pullets and stags.

I call the black line “Maitum” and the red line “Mariga.” The females are medium-stationed while the males are medium to high-stationed.

Almost all of them would come out with a pea-shaped comb with a very small number appearing with straight combs, a physical trait which I believe will disappear as I get deeper into consolidating the Manok PiNoy gene pool.

The leg color would be predominantly yellow with some of them having black spots while a very small number would come out with green legs.

But whatever the color of their feather is, every Manok PiNoy possesses the same spherical and robust body with firm meat and long muscle strands.

The very reason I bred them is to produce a dual purpose backyard chicken which could be grown and raised in the free range using locally available feed materials like corn, rice bran and copra meal.