Qualitative Traits of Walik Chickens, The Rare Indigenous Chicken, in West Java, Indonesia

Abstract

The Walik chicken is one of the rare indigenous chickens in Indonesia owned .frizzling feathers. Since the external genetic information of Walik chickens is very limited, therefore, the study on the qualitative traits of such rare indigenous chicken is necessary to support their comprehensive repertoire that would be useful for their preservation efforts and potency development. Thirty six Walik chickens (J 5 cocks, 21 hens), and 42 Walik chickens (16 cocks, 26 hens) from Sumedang and Bogor District, respectively, were used in this study. The variety on base color of feather, color of the plumage, flick feather, feather pattern, shank color, and comb types of the chickens were identified based on Hutt (1949), and Somes (1988). The frequency of autosomal genes, sex-linked genes, and feather pattern were quantified based on Nishida et al. (1980), and Stanfield (1982). The Walik chickens from Sumedang and Bogor District population have shown predominantly similarities on the plumage color (i), the wild feather pattern (e+ ), single comb (p), and white/yellow shank (!did). However, the Walik chickens from Bogor District population were dominated by the strip feather/B (52%), and the silvered-flick feather/S (54%). The Walik chickens from Sumedang District population were dominated by the plain feather lb (54%), and golden flick feathers/s (84%). The low frequency occurence of some qualitative traits could be useful for selection in order to conserved the rare traits. Further studies on the quantitative traits, and the molecular analysis need to be done to complete a set of characterization of the Walik chickens.