Phenotypic variation of Thai indigenous chicken
Variation in qualitative traits such as plumage color, comb type, skin color, eye color, shank color, and beak color
were evaluated on 320 Thai indigenous chickens. The results indicated that the predominant plumage color of the
indigenous chicken found in the highland region of Phayao are black (56%) followed by red brownish (14%) and
white (13%) (Fig. 3). The overall means indicated that 73.5, 55.6, 65.8 and 61.4% of the chickens had pea comb
types, black shank color, eye color, and black beak color, respectively. The average body weight of maturity male
and female chickens found in this region were 1.95 r 0.25 and 1.58 r 0.19 kg, respectively. This is in agreement
with report of Choprakarn and Wongpichet (2007) that male and female chickens enter maturity at 8–12 and 6–8
months of age, and with 1.8-2.3 and 1.4-1.8 kg body weight, respectively. The average breast length of mature male
and female was 41.44 ± 0.55 and 32.22 ± 0.27 cm, respectively. Shank length of male was 6.22 ± 0.11 cm and
female chicken was 4.33 ± 0.18 cm. Beak length of male was 2.11 ± 0.09 and female chickens was 1.59 ± 0.15 cm