New Life for Native Farm Animals

Some of the most popular breeds of livestock and poultry these days really are quite something. For instance:

White broilers, the best-selling type of chicken these days, produce one kilo of meat for every two kilos of feed they eat. And they're ready for market in just 50 days, compared with 100 days for native chickens.

White leghorn pullets can lay 280 eggs a year, 180 more than native chickens, and the eggs are each 10g heavier.

Duroc pigs, a common guest at the dinner table, not only grow twice as fast as the native Taoyuan pig, they have thinner skin, smaller bones and over 10 percent more prime meat.

The discrepancy in cattle is even clearer. Water buffalos and Chinese cattle produce just enough to feed their calves, without any extra for people.

Domestic livestock and poultry have always been a major source of animal protein, with the sole point in raising them being to fill our bellies. New, improved varieties with rapid growth, greater fecundity or better taste have won favor over time, and pure native strains that haven't been interbred have gradually declined in popularity or even face extinction.

Ever since the day wild animals were first domesticated, people have constantly tried to improve them. With the commercialization of agriculture during the industrial revolution, all kinds of new varieties were developed that grew faster, ate less and produced more offspring than their forebears. By the 20th century, the economic efficiency of domestic fowl and livestock had nearly doubled, but the pace of improvement was stalled. There were no more breakthroughs in pig breeding after the 1940s, and poultry and cattle soon reached the same pass.

Interbreeding is one of the methods of natural evolution, but without man's interference, whether or not a strain could survive depended on its ability to adapt, on whether it could pass the test of survival of the fittest. With artificial breeding, the rules of the game have been changed, the test of nature has been removed, and the sole criterion for survival is economic value.

"Heaven must have put me here for some purpose," the saying goes, and while native breeds may not compare with improved strains in terms of economic performance, they still possess one or two special characteristics, such as resistance to certain diseases or an ability to eat certain foods, that have enabled them to pass nature's tests and survive.

"Those innate endowments were given to them by the Creator and are gifts to mankind, too. If we don't preserve them today, they could disappear forever, and if the improved strains should ever meet up with a certain disease or die out because of a sudden change in the environment, we'd be finished without the backup of the tougher native breeds," says Dr. Chien Tai, director general of the Taiwan Livestock Research Institute.

Improved breeds are like delicate hothouse flowers, protected under a myriad of safeguards, that produce beautiful blossoms. Native breeds are like wildflowers in the field. They may not be much to look at, but they can survive the wind and the frost.

Today's improved pig, for example, is accustomed to eating a mixture of Western feeds such as maize and beans. If an emergency like a war or an oil crisis ever broke out and feed factories had to shut down, the improved breeds would find it hard to survive. But the native Taoyuan pig is happy as a clam with just water, sweet potato stalks and grass roots. And the Lanyu small-eared pig can even live off human excrement, according to Dr. Sung Yung-yi, a professor of animal husbandry at National Taiwan University who has done quite a lot of research on pigs.

Improved breeds are not only coddled and spoiled, they've even lost some of their innate abilities under mankind's remolding. Leghorn hens, for example, are separated from their eggs as soon as they've been laid and have forgotten how to brood, a job that's been taken over by incubators. If the electricity ever went out, the chicks would probably die in their shells.

In view of the importance of preserving genetic resources, the R.O.C. Council of Agriculture in 1987 initiated a multifaceted agriculture, forestry, fishery and livestock breed-preservation program, under the direction of the Taiwan Livestock Research Institute, with breeding and propagation stations in Ilan, Hualien, Taitung, Hengchun and Changhua.

Just which breeds are being preserved?

From the standpoint of utility, the more strains the better, because the greater the variety of strains preserved, the easier it is to call the outstanding characteristics of each and cultivate a new breed combining them all. However, each country in the world still tends to concentrate on protecting its own native breeds. Finances are limited, on the one hand, and on the other, the original area is more suited for preserving native varieties. As a result, the Council of Agriculture has designated "endemic breeds" and "Taiwan improved breeds" as objects for preservation during the current stage of the program.

Many breeds, such as water buffalos, goats, chickens, Taoyuan pigs, Chinese geese and brown tsaiya ducks, were actually brought to Taiwan by early pioneers from the mainland, but the fact that they managed to adapt and make themselves at home here means that they qualify as native breeds, in contrast to outsider or improved strains.

In addition, new strains that have been developed from native breeds, such as white tsaiya ducks, which came from the brown variety, or Lee-Sung pigs, which are a crossbreed of Lanyu small-ear pigs and a foreign variety, also qualify for the program. Both strains have now been internationally recognized following selective breeding, propagation over several generations and close observation that their special characteristics have stabilized.

If you want to preserve a breed, you have to know what the real thing looks like first, before you can start collecting them.

Farmers in traditional society didn't regularly keep a whole lot of information on domestic animals, not to mention their genes, blood types and so forth. The distinguishing characteristics of native breeds can only be roughly sketched out from descriptions and "person-to-animal" verifications by old-timers.

The degree of difficulty in identification varies. Water buffalos are the easiest, because they have a different number of chromosomes than other cattle and don't crossbreed. Native Taiwan goats take on all comers though, and mixed varieties are particularly numerous.

"Sometimes you're really excited when you see a flock of goats from the distance, but when you come up close you find out not a single one is up to standard," says Shih I-chang, head of the Hualien Livestock Breeding Station, with a helpless expression. In sample gathering, he says, it's "better to reject a hundred by mistake than to misjudge One."

In seeking native varieties, the workers at each breeding station really wrack their bodies and brains, trekking over hill and dale to the most remote locations, because the more remote a place is, the more possibility there is of finding pure samples.

It's not easy. Sometimes they haven't been able to find anything that looks right, even after three years of searching. And sometimes the animals look all right, but their purity is questionable. They then have to be interbred, and any of their offspring that are too far off the mark have to weeded out in the process.

The main goal of the program is to preserve the special characteristics of each type of animal, so once a breed is obtained, another important task is to let them grow and reproduce naturally according to their innate natures. The ideal method is to maintain a large herd or flock in natural surroundings, and to let them interbreed and purify their stock naturally. But when the animals' heritage is dubious to begin with, they have to be selectively bred. Chickens, for instance, have to be separated into special cages, and the mother and father of each egg determined.

"If we don't make sure first that they're pure, native specimens, we won't be able to understand them properly and go on to make use of their genes," points out Dr. Ming-che Wu, a research physiologist and geneticist at the institute, who has compiled a handbook on the subject.

That's one big difference between preserving domestic animal breeds and protecting wild animals. The main purpose of livestock preservation is still utilization. You don't just want to preserve the animals, you also want to find out which genes carry which hereditary characteristics and stabilize them, so you have to use artificial controls.

And natural surroundings don't mean an environment in the wild. They're called "domestic" fowl and livestock because they live with man, "and simulating the surroundings in which they were once raised isn't very possible, practically speaking." Dr. Wu says. "In fact, sometimes those surroundings actually blur their special characteristics and make them less like the way they should be."

But just how far should humans interfere? How can we be sure that we're simply helping them recover their inherent natures and not remolding them into something new? The various factors have to be controlled just right, and the personnel in charge have to observe what's going on constantly and make adjustments accordingly. The methods differ from breed to breed, and the whole process is truly easier said than done.

The workers who look after these "live specimens" have many basic tasks to perform: regularly weighing them, measuring their size, watching their rate of growth, recording their sexual activity, number of offspring, age of maturity and ability to propagate, testing their skin thickness with ultrasonic waves, taking blood samples and checking their excrement. And dealing with animals means that even the simplest tasks can turn into messy problems.

It takes three people to weigh a Taoyuan pig, for example: one to grab onto it, one to hold it on the scales and one to record the reading. "If you run into one that wants to be lazy, you can't budge it no matter what threats or enticements you use. All you can do is to bring over an eight-man wheelbarrow and haul it off," says Chung Yu-hsin, director of the research institute's ranch.

And what happened at the Hualien livestock breeding station was scarier. The station director, Shih I-chang, was inspecting a cow one time and had fastened her hind legs in an iron chain, when she somehow fought loose and kicked out. Fortunately, he alertly jumped back and was only kicked in the stomach. If it had been straight on, he might not still be around to talk about it.

Taking care of live and kicking animals is always tricky, unlike plants, whose seeds can be frozen for about ten years without changing. If animal ovums and sperm could be saved like plant seeds, it would save a lot of trouble.

"The latest method for freezing animal ovums and sperm is the genetic resource preservation method, which is both economic and practical," says Liu Jui-chen, an assistant researcher at the institute.

One cc of chicken sperm, for instance, which contains 5 billion sperm cells, can be stored at a temperature of minus 196 degrees centigrade for 11 or 12 years. But that's only half the story. When needed, fertilized eggs can be placed inside a mother, which will give birth to an animal with the genes required.

Experts on Taiwan are keeping pace with the rest of the world in this field of technology. Sperm preservation is generally no longer a problem, and embryo preservation has been achieved for Chinese cattle, goats and pigs, offering further safeguards.

Different times bring different social needs, and genetic resources are serving an increasing number of purposes with advances in genetic engineering. In the past, genes were considered fatal flaws, but now they're seen as positive points of attraction.

"Breed preservation originally meant collecting and keeping breeds in case they were needed some day. But with genetic engineering, it also has a more positive function," Dr. Tai says.

Breed preservation may seem purely utilitarian, but its greatest significance lies in enabling animals to carry on the family line, so to speak. "Passing on to future generations the resources our ancestors have bequeathed to us can be called a historical mission," says Chih Shuang-ching, director of the Council of Agriculture's Animal Industry Department.

"If you've ever seen a Taoyuan pig, you'll realize where the idea for Pigsy in Journey to the West came from," Dr. Tai says. Big ears, a sagging belly, a square face and wide nostrils are all characteristics of the Chinese pig. If the children of the future never have a chance to see a real Taoyuan pig and only know the foreign variety with little ears and curly tails, they'll probably think the ancients must have had really wild imaginations to dream up a creature like Pigsy.

[Picture Caption]

People and ducklings under heat lamps work together to maintain and preserve native Taiwan breeds.

A herd of native Taiwan goats at the propagation station are about to return from the pasture. The female at right is carrying twins.

The meagerest of fare is a feast for the native Taiwan chicken--in fact, spartan living has built up its resistance to disease and a tolerance for coarse fodder.

"I may not look like a movie star but I've got what it takes (to have a lot of babies)" is the signature song of the Taoyuan pig.

Front-line workers usually fit the saying, "If you hang around with pigs, you're bound to get mucked up." Scenes as relaxed as this are rare.

Water buffalos have tilled our paddies for millennia, yet how much do we really know about them?

Improved duck strains have been deliberately deprived of their ability to brood. Native ducks have made the preservation honor roll because they know how.

To establish correct genealogies and purify bloodlines, researchers have to keep hens in separate cages and artificially inseminate them so they know who the real parents of the chicks are.

High-technology freezing of sperm and embryos is the safest and most economical way of preserving genetic resources.

A herd of native Taiwan goats at the propagation station are about to return from the pasture. The female at right is carrying twins.

The meagerest of fare is a feast for the native Taiwan chicken--in fact, spartan living has built up its resistance to disease and a tolerance for coarse fodder.

"I may not look like a movie star but I've got what it takes （to have a lot of babies）" is the signature song of the Taoyuan pig.

Front-line workers usually fit the saying, "If you hang around with pigs, you're bound to get mucked up." Scenes as relaxed as this are rare.

Water buffalos have tilled our paddies for millennia, yet how much do we really know about them?

Improved duck strains have been deliberately deprived of their ability to brood. Native ducks have made the preservation honor roll because they know how.

To establish correct genealogies and purify bloodlines, researchers have to keep hens in separate cages and artificially inseminate them so they know who the real parents of the chicks are.

High-technology freezing of sperm and embryos is the safest and most economical way of preserving genetic resources.