Institute for Small Animal Research
Department of Gene Conservation
H-2101 Gödöllõ, P.O.Box 417
Hungary
The origin of Hungarian and Transylvanian chicken breeds is not known exactly. Winkler (1921) and Bakoss (1931) presume that progenitors of these birds were brought into the Carpathian basin from Asia by the Hungarian conquerors at the end of the ninth century. This "ancient Hungarian" chicken later must have mixed with other breeds (mostly Oriental and Mediterranean types), which formed the different Hungarian chicken breeds as they are known today. During the centuries of their formation these breeds have been well adapted to the special climatic conditions and farming systems of the country, which made them very precious in this part of Europe.
Until the beginning of commercial chicken breeding in Hungary these breeds of chickens of different colours (white and partridge in the Great Hungarian Plain, yellow and speckled in Transdanubia, mostly white, black and speckled naked neck breeds in Transylvania) were bred. They were preferred here not only for their relatively good egg production but mostly for their excellent meat quality coming from the "seeking habit" of these birds, scratching for food regardless of hot or cold weather. They became strong, resistant to diseases and the costs of keeping them were very low.
In order to keep up with other European and overseas chicken breeds a major breeding program was started at the predecessor of the Institute for Small Animal Research in Gödöllõ in the early 1930s. Breeding work of Báldy and his colleagues was aimed at making the breeds uniform in colour and body shape, improving egg production together with body weight to a level that does not affect meat quality. This work resulted in good dual-purpose (meat and egg) Hungarian chicken breeds, which were propagated all over the country and abroad.
During the Second World War the majority of these birds were killed. Nevertheless, thanks to systematic breeding work of Bálint Báldy, Béla Lacza, Alfréd Suschka and others in Gödöllõ, and Ferenc Biszkup,, László Beke and their colleagues in Mosonmagyaróvár, Hungarian indigenous chicken breeds were not only preserved, but propagated again in great quantities by the 1950s (Biszkup and Beke, 1951; Báldy, 1954; Annual Report, Institute for Small Animal Research, 1954).
Beginning in the early 1960s, together with the expansion of commercial poultry breeding, Hungarian breeds were replaced by foreign hybrids of both layer and meat type chickens even on small-scale farms. Since then it has been the task of the Institute of Agricultural Quality Control (and its predecessors) to maintain Hungarian and Transylvanian breeds as a gene reserve. In close co-operation with that institute, the following institutions are presently involved in this important programme in Hungary: Pannon University of Agricultural Science, Mosonmagyaróvár (Hungarian Yellow breed), Debrecen University of Agricultural Science, Hódmezõvásárhely (Hungarian Speckled and Transylvanian Naked Neck Speckled breeds) and the Institute for Small Animal Research, Department of Gene Conservation, Gödöllõ (all, up to now, maintained Hungarian and Transylvanian Naked Neck chicken breeds).
In the remainder of this paper, first, the standard characteristics of indigenous Hungarian and Transylvanian Naked Neck chicken breeds are described and then the production traits based on the results obtained in Gödöllõ are briefly dealt with. Finally, the possible future use of these breeds as suggestions of the authors, is also discussed.
Although these breeds are usually described as colour varieties of the same Hungarian or Transylvanian Naked Neck chicken (Bakoss, 1931; Báldy, 1954), and many breeders nowadays think that Transylvanian chicken is a naked neck variety of the Hungarian breed, the author wishes to make it perfectly clear that these breeds are different and should be considered to be independent as they cannot be reproduced from each other. Therefore, they are discussed in this way here. Description of the standard of Hungarian and Transylvanian Naked Neck breeds given here are based on the "Standard of the Most Frequent Poultry Breeds Found in Hungary" (1932).
Standard weight: cock, 3000g, cockerel, 2500g, hen, 2500g, pullet, 2000g.
Head: small, short and round.
Beak: short, curved and thick at the base.
Eye: bright, expressive, distrustful look.
Comb: single, medium size, erect, curved back behind the head.
Face: almost totally unfeathered.
Ear lob: big, oval-shape.
Wattle: big, oval or round-shape.
Neck: getting thicker toward the body (less in hens) with thick neck-plumage.
Trunk: medium size, cylinder-like; the trunk of the hen is longer.
Breast: round, broad and fairly prominent.
Back and saddle: the back is hollow and shows distinct slope towards the saddle; the back line of the hen is more horizontal.
Wing: fairly big, fits close to the body.
Tail: Erect, closed, comparatively big.
Shanks and toes: medium-size shank and toes; number of toes, 4.
Posture: stately, rather wild and distrustful.
Plumage: fit to the body, thick underfeather.
Among Hungarian chicken breeds three different breeds are maintained as close populations. Special characteristics of these breeds are given below:
Hungarian Speckled
Beak: ivory-white.
Eye: orange-red.
Comb, face, ear-lob and wattle: blood-red.
Shanks and toes: flesh, ivory-white (might be yellow, according to Báldy, 1954).
Plumage: plumage colour is bluish-grey, each feather is crossed by narrow, not regular black bars. The pattern should be neither too fine nor too hard (the hen has the same but darker pattern).
Hungarian Yellow
Beak: yellow.
Eye: orange-red.
Comb, face, ear-lob and wattle: blood-red.
Shank and toes: yellow.
Plumage: the hen is bright-yellow, with the lower neck feathers tipped with brown or black, the webs dark-brown and the main tail feathers brown or black; the basic colour of plumage of the cock is similar, with somewhat darker, bright yellow surface colour of the neck, wing bows and saddle. The main feathers of the tail are greenish-black.
Hungarian White
Beak: ivory-white
Eye: orange-red.
Comb, face, ear-lob, wattle: blood-red.
Shanks and toes: flesh, ivory-white (might be yellow, according to Báldy, 1954).
Plumage: brilliant, pure white.
This type of chicken was first mentioned as Szeremlei chicken after the name of its first known breeder in the 1840s (Bakoss, 1931).
Standard weight: cock: 3000g, cockerel, 2500g, hen, 2500g, pullet, 2000g.
Head: medium-size, round. Feathers on the top are fit to the head and make a pointed tip backwards.
Beak: medium-size, thick, slightly curved.
Eye: large, fiery.
Comb: single, medium-size.
Face: unfeathered.
Ear-lob: small, round.
Wattle: medium-size, oval or round, pendulous.
Neck: unfeathered, long and strong but not thick.
Trunk: strong, medium-size, oval; unfeathered from the prominent crop through the abdomen towards the cloaca.
Breast: broad and strong-muscled; the skin over the carina is unfeathered.
Back: broad.
Saddle: slightly rising.
Wing: fairly long, almost totally horizontal.
Tail: curved backward, not held erected; main feathers are long.
Shank and toes: long and strong, unfeathered; number of toes, 4.
Posture: brave, vivid.
Plumage: fit to the body.
Among Transylvanian Naked Neck chickens the following three breeds can be listed.
Transylvanian Naked Neck Speckled
This is as the Hungarian Speckled, except that yellow shank and toes are not allowed:
Beak: ivory-white.
Eye: orange-red.
Comb, face, ear-lob and wattle: blood-red.
Shanks and toes: flesh, ivory-white
Plumage: plumage colour is bluish-grey, each feather is crossed by narrow, not regular black bars. The pattern should be neither too fine nor too hard (the hen has the same but darker pattern).
Transylvanian Naked Neck Black
Beak: slate-grey.
Eye: orange-red.
Comb, face, ear-lob, wattle: blood-red, the wattle is round.
Shanks and toes: slate-grey.
Plumage: black with steel shade.
Transylvanian Naked Neck White
This is as the Hungarian White, except that yellow shank and toes are not allowed:
Beak: ivory-white
Eye: orange-red.
Comb, face, ear-lob, wattle: blood-red.
Shanks and toes: flesh, ivory-white (might be yellow, according to Báldy, 1954).
Plumage: brilliant, pure white.
Body weight of cockerels and pullets of the Hungarian and Transylvanian breeds until 30 weeks of age is shown in Fig. 1. It demonstrates that body weight gain is quite similar in both types and that body weight is very close to the standard.
Monthly egg production of the two types of chicken is shown in Fig. 2. Hungarian and Transylvanian Naked Neck breeds do not follow the usual persistency of commercial flocks and the latter shows somewhat higher egg production capability. It should be mentioned however, that birds were kept under semi-extensive circumstances, which is usual in rearing this type of chickens.
All breeds showed egg weight between 56 and 59 g by the 24th week of egg production except the Transylvanian Naked Neck Speckled, which have somewhat lower egg weight (53.2 g) at that age.
Figure 1. Body weight of Hungarian (H) and Transylvanian (T) chicken breeds until 30 weeks of age
(after Szalay et al., 1992)
Figure 2. Egg production of Hungarian (H) and Transylvanian (T) chicken breeds during the first 6 months of production (February - July) (after Szalay et al., 1992.)
Hatchability results slightly show the inbreeding effect in all indigenous breeds studied here, being between 57% and 78% (the average hatchability of all six breeds was 61.2% in 1990).
Great efforts are to be made by breeders involved in the maintenance of these breeds to make them productive dual-purpose birds. Earlier results show that this type of chicken is worth breeding and propagating especially for small scale farmers, as it needs no investment and has low maintenance costs.
Together with improving reproduction traits by special genetic means such as immunogenetics and cytogenetics as well as meat and egg production to a certain level by selection, it is a very important task to maintain excellent meat quality of these breeds.
Semi-extensive method of keeping, together with the genetically determined high quality meat, may assure that in the future Hungarian and Transylvanian Naked Neck breeds will be of great importance in organic production of chicken meat and eggs in this country, for which there is a great demand in the western countries.
Authors think that the possibility of this type of commercial use of indigenous Hungarian chicken breeds is real, which again indicates the importance of conserving as gene reserves breeds and varieties that seem to be useless at certain periods of time.
Bakoss, L. (1931) Gazdasági baromfitenyésztés. 2. kiadás (Farm poultry breeding. 2nd edition) Csáthy Ferenc Egyetemi Könyvkereskedés és Irodalmi Vállalat Rt., Budapest-Debrecen. (in Hungarian)
Báldy, B. (1954) A baromfi tenyésztése (Breeding of poultry) Mezõgazdasági Kiadó, Budapest. (in Hungarian)
Biszkup, F., Beke, L., (1951) A magyaróvári sárga magyar tájfajta tyúk kitenyésztésének módszerei és eredményei. (Methods and results of breeding of the Mosonmagyarávár Hungarian Yellow indigenous chicken breed.) Agrártudomány:III(9) 461-467. (in Hungarian)
Fajtajellegleírása a Magyarországon leggyakrabban elõforduló baromfifajtáknak. (Standard of the Most Frequent Poultry Breeds Found in Hungary) (1932) "Pátria" Irodalmi Vállalat és Nyomdai Részvénytársaság, Budapest (in Hungarian)
Kisállattenyésztési Kutatóintézet Évvégi Jelentése. (Annual Report of the Institute for Small Animal Research) (1954) KÁTKI, Gödöllõ (in Hungarian)
Winkler, J. (1921) Baromfitenyésztés. (Poultry breeding) "Pátria" Irodalmi Vállalat és Nyomdai Részvénytársaság, Budapest (in Hungarian)
7. Szalay, I., Biszkup, F., Barta, I., Koppány, G. (1992) Present status of the native Hungarian chicken breeds. In: Genetic Conservation of Domestic Livestock. Vol. 2., Chapter 22, (pp. 223-231). Ed. L. Lawrence and I. Bodó. C.A.B. International, Wallingford, UK.