Searching for the legendary "mascot"

It is thought that "Elephant with nine tusks, chicken with nine spurs" is a story that only exists in legends, but in the mountainous district of Tan Son, for more than 10 years, Muong man Nguyen Van Duc in Zone 2, Tan Phu commune has been determined to "revive" the precious chicken breed that exists in real life, developing it as a commodity that brings high economic value.

The multi-spurred chicken has a heroic appearance, colorful colors, red comb, and a curved tail like a rainbow.

Having been a teacher for many years, the Muong man always had a burning desire to get rich on his homeland. Having had a passion for chickens since his youth, realizing that the land where he was born and raised had a rare breed of 9-spur chicken (scientific name is multi-spur chicken), which was valuable but was not raised properly and was therefore mixed with other breeds, in 2013, Duc decided to start a business with this breed of chicken.

Multi-spurred chickens, which were previously only found in the wild, were later domesticated and raised at home by people. They have quite different characteristics compared to other chicken breeds, such as having many spurs on their legs, usually 6-8 spurs, especially some with 9 spurs. Multi-spurred chickens have a heroic appearance with colorful feathers, red combs, bright eyes, a tail curved like a rainbow, a loud crow, large, strong and even legs, and the top spur is completely horned, curved like a sickle...

Mr. Duc placed the nine-spurred chicken right at the gate of his house so that customers could come and see it directly.

In the early days of starting his business, Mr. Duc encountered many difficulties, especially in finding purebred chickens because this breed of chicken is often raised scattered in people's homes. In the first year, he had to travel to all the villages in the district, knocking on each door to search, buy, bring back and select based on phenotype, weight, physical condition, number of spurs on the legs and test raising 30 chickens on a household scale to gain experience. After the process of learning and practicing, he determined to set a goal of developing the chicken flock to 200 chickens, then 1,000 chickens and gradually expanding the number.

Through the breeding experiment, realizing that natural breeding has a success rate of only 30%, Mr. Duc invested money to buy 3 incubators, thereby increasing the success rate to more than 80%. The rate of chickens with many spurs in each flock is about 80%, although the eggs are all laid by the same mother. Notably, both roosters and hens have spurs and they appear as soon as the chickens hatch. However, the number of chickens with 9 spurs is very rare, out of 1,000 chickens, there are only about 3 chickens with 9 spurs.

The spurs appear as soon as the chickens hatch.

In 2021, to develop this breed of chicken in a modern direction, with a scale of goods following the chain from production to consumption, in order to expand it to become a way out of poverty for ethnic minorities in the locality, Mr. Duc established Nang Trung Du Company Limited, linking with more than 20 households raising multi-spur chickens in Tan Phu and Kiet Son communes of Tan Son district.

Currently, his multi-spur chicken farm has an area of ​​over 1 hectare, designed with a barn, auxiliary area and necessary tools with a flock of over 2,000 birds. According to calculations, the annual revenue from selling commercial multi-spur chickens and breeding chickens reaches over 2 billion VND. Mr. Duc divides his multi-spur chickens into different product types including meat chickens, ornamental chickens, gift chickens, and premium chickens (chickens with 9 spurs). The prices of these types range from 200,000 VND - 300,000 VND/kg, while premium chickens cost from 9 million VND - 30 million VND. This is a rare item so it has a very high price, and many people hunt and buy it. Taking advantage of technology and social networks, Mr. Duc has regularly posted and promoted 9-spur chicken products on Facebook, Tiktok... thereby gaining a number of regular customers and potential customers.

Currently, Mr. Duc has linked up with a number of restaurants in and outside the province to make multi-spurred chicken one of the unique dishes in the restaurant's cuisine.

Sharing his plans for the near future, the Muong man said that he will work with farmers to implement agricultural digitalization, including: Scanning QR codes to look up information such as farming location, farming process, food, and age of chickens; moving towards launching and testing rental chicken farming service packages, visiting farms of chicken farmers and experiencing cultural and culinary life in Muong villages... Hopefully, with the passion and enthusiasm of youth, Duc will help bring his hometown's products further and further and support ethnic people to improve their lives and become rich.

Thu Huong