Breeding practice of indigenous village chickens, and traits and breed preferences of smallholder farmers.

Background: Indigenous village chickens, or (IVCs), significantly contribute to rural livelihoods. Although natural selection has a disproportionate impact on the genetic structure of IVCs, farmers have developed locally tailored breeding practices to get the most out of their flocks.

Objectives: Small-scale farmers' insights on trait breed preferences and family flock breeding practices are presented in this cross-sectional study.

Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted in two agroecological zones using face-to-face individual interviews with 119 general informants.

Results: Farmers prefer IVCs because they are multipurpose birds. Unlike policymakers, who usually underestimate the importance of IVCs, small-scale farmers acknowledge the coexistence of local and commercial chickens. Only 15.7% of farmers recruited homegrown cocks, whereas 47.9% outsourced breeding cocks from local markets and 36.4% from neighbours (χ-squared = 15.976, df = 2, p = 0.0003395). About 49.2% of small-scale farmers believed that consanguineous mating-induced inbreeding has only trivial effects. High flock turnover significantly reduces inbreeding. Regardless of the low production capacity, small-scale farmers prefer local (rank = 1.47) chickens to commercial (rank = 1.61). For cocks, fertility and growth traits were highly sought after, whereas for hens, maternal instincts and laying performance were prioritized. Compared to the highlands, the lowlands had a longer egg storage period (t = 2.677, df = 117, p = 0.009, 95% CI: -3.7607, -0.5622).

Conclusions: This study documented the wisdom of small-scale farmers and encouraged the incorporation of their insights into a sustainable genetic improvement program.