New breed of bird is both chicken and egg

The naturally bred Giri Raja chicken offers benefits to poor farmers at a time of high food prices and avoids the culling of young male chicks

Juliette Jowit, guardian.co.uk 26 Aug 08;

Centuries ago wild fowl must have seemed a wonderful animal to domesticate. They produced eggs while they were alive, meat when they were dead, and lived on household scraps.

But in the last few decades modern chickens have emerged which are almost unrecognisable from their ancestors: bred with huge breasts to eat or only to produce eggs, and always as quickly as possible.

Now scientists have turned back the tide and developed a new variety which will produce both eggs and meat.

Animal welfare experts claim the Giri Raja – Forest King – chickens will have huge benefits. Less intensive breeding means they will not have health problems because they are not forced to grow fast and disproportionately. And because they produce both eggs and meat billions of male laying birds will not have to be slaughtered at birth each year.

Scientists at Bangalore's Veterinary College in India developed the new chicken from a traditional breed using natural breeding techniques. They hope the dual-purpose chickens will help independent and subsistence farmers, especially in the developing world, because the birds will be better able to survive outside specialist factory farms.

Joyce D'Silva, ambassador for the charity Compassion in World Farming, said the new brown-feathered chickens looked at first glance like most of the world's more than 50bn intensively-farmed birds – until you see them walk.

"The average battery chicken walks in a very ungainly way, they kind of lurch from side to side when they walk; this chicken looks a lot more agile and healthy," she said.

As well as avoiding the pain of fast-growing bodies on immature legs and skeletons, the Forest King chickens need few drugs, can live a more "free range" life, and does not need to be fed soy protein which has been linked to mass forest clearance in South America, said D'Silva.

"If you took the average chicken from a factory farm and plonked it down in a small household's backyard in Bangalore it wouldn't be able to run away from a cat or dog if it needed to. And it would probably get ill very quickly because its immune system is seriously undermined," she said.

"This chicken, if a dog was trying to catch it, could fly away, it's sturdier and does very well on scavenging household waste."

In recent years some farmers have returned to traditional dual-purpose breeds in response to concern about factory farming, but so far these have been in tiny numbers. The Indian scientists hope their new breed will be available to millions of ordinary people.

Professor R N Sreenivas Gowda, vice chancellor of the Veterinary College, Bangalore, told the Ecologist film unit the main aim was to help families in India who were struggling to feed themselves, especially when food prices were rising.

"We're encouraging the farmers so that they can have healthy food in their diets ... and also they can make income, make money, out of this," said Gowda.

However the National Farmers Union said even if the breed could survive in the UK it would only ever be in a small minority.

Sam Hawkes, the NFU poultry advisor, said: "It's down to the economics. A fast-growing breed costs less to produce and therefore costs less to the retailer.

"It's all being driven by what the consumer wants, and farmers and companies have been driven to produce that."