Longgang Sanhuang Chicken

Longgang Sanhuang Chicken

　　Longgang Sanhuang Chicken is a well-known and long-established specialty of Shenzhen. Compared to ordinary chickens, it offers advantages such as easy breeding, strong disease resistance, high survival rate, fast growth, and easily increased yield. In cooking, it is mainly prepared through braising or stewed in earthen pots, resulting in delicious flavors with appealing color and aroma, and its nutrients are highly absorbable. The Sanhuang Chicken is tall and robust, with thick, tender meat, snow-white and glossy skin, soft and chewable bones, making it highly valuable as food. It serves as an excellent dietary choice for nourishing yin and yang and replenishing energy.

　　　　Originally, the term "Sanhuang Chicken" referred to chickens with yellow feathers, yellow beaks, and yellow feet, along with yellow skin. Such chickens have tender and smooth meat, crispy skin, soft bones, rich fat content, and delicious flavor. Nowadays, the term "Sanhuang Chicken" does not refer to a specific breed but is a general term for high-quality yellow-feathered broiler chickens. This category includes many breeds distributed widely. In Guangdong, the main types are Sanhuang Huxu Chicken, Qingyuan Ma Chicken, Xinghua Chicken, Zhongshan Shalan Chicken, Yangshan Chicken, Wenchang Chicken, and Huaixiang Chicken. In Shanghai, there's Pudong Chicken; in Zhejiang, Xiaoshan Chicken; in Beijing, You Chicken; in Fujian, Putian Chicken; and in Shandong, Shouguang Chicken. These Sanhuang Chickens are highly favored by domestic markets as well as consumers in Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, and Southeast Asia. However, in terms of feather color, they vary – including light yellow, golden yellow, reddish-yellow, brownish-yellow, dark yellow, as well as mottled yellow and mottled brownish-yellow. The colors of their feet, beaks, and skin also differ, as do their body shapes, appearances, and production performance.

　　　　With the improvement of people’s living standards and the expansion of the consumer market, the demand for broiler chickens has increased. To meet consumer needs, poultry science professionals have actively engaged in breeding and cultivating Sanhuang Chickens using modern genetics, breeding principles, and technologies. Since Guangdong introduced Shiqi Hybrid Chickens from Hong Kong, the broiler chicken industry has developed rapidly, leading to an increase in the number of Sanhuang Chickens. Currently, Sanhuang Chickens in Guangdong can be roughly divided into the following four categories based on their production performance and body size: (1) Local high-quality breeds in Guangdong, commonly known as indigenous or native chickens. (2) High-quality “imitation native” yellow chickens represented by Shiqi Hybrid and Yuehuang Chicken. (3) Improved chickens based on Shiqi Hybrid, which grow relatively quickly, commonly referred to as “medium-fast” Sanhuang Chickens. (4) Large-sized, fast-growing Sanhuang Chickens that include certain bloodlines of broiler breeds, represented by Yuehuang “882,” known as “fast-growing” Sanhuang Chickens. These Sanhuang Chickens not only retain the premium flavors of traditional Sanhuang Chickens, but also show improvements in growth rate, feed conversion efficiency, meat and egg production.