Today, it is very common to have a meal of chicken meat, which is benefited from the great-leap-forward development of China’s chicken industry in ten and odds years. Along with continuous increase of broiler output, competition in broiler market becomes increasingly fierce. Then, what kind of broiler has market competition power?

Broiler in China can be broadly broken down into 3 different types.

The first type is heavy type broiler, the second type is quality broiler represented by Sanhuang broiler and the third type is culled egg-layer. According to incomplete statistics, the annual output of heavy type broiler is 2-2.5 billion birds and mainly concentrated in North China. Quality broiler is mainly distributed in Guangdong and surrounding provinces, most of which are native chickens with a number of 1.3-1.5 billion birds. China has 1.2 billion culled egg layers as broiler consumed by people, with a market mainly in North China, Northeast China, northern Jiangsu province and central plain areas. From these statistics, it is easy to see that heavy-type broiler, quality broiler and culled egg-layer are three major components in China’s broiler market. Then, on what advantage do they win the market?

Some regions in South China, particularly consumers in Guangdong Province, are not accustomed to consume frozen food. They would like to buy live chickens from the fair and consume then after killing and cooking.

Sanhuang chicken is a quality chicken breed through selection and breeding. It has kept the fragrance of traditional chickens, has faster growth rate than traditional chickens while the price is appropriate. Therefore, Sanhuang Chicken is welcomed in South China where people are too fastidious about their food. In addition, people in East China and Central China show great appreciation for it. However, in North China, people have different habit in eating chickens from the people in South China. They buy cut chicken meat of large-size chickens and eat them after oil fry, or stir-fry or roast them, paying no attention to the fragrance of chickens. Plus the fast growth rate and low price, large-size broilers have become the main body in broiler consumption market in North China. As compared with large-size broiler and Sanhuang chicken, culled egg-layer has the lowest price, because they are by-product of egg layers. The roast chickens, people like very much and live chickens bought from country fairs, are all culled egg layers. Although they have not become a trunk-stream broiler breed in one region, they have a market in most parts of China except South China.

In a word, because of food habit, economic level and transportation factors, China’s broiler market has a situation of standing like the legs of a tripod

Source: Chinese Journal of Poultry, No. 12, 2003. p. 8