The country chicken, due to its excellent meat quality, is one of the most popular meat-type chicken in Taiwan, even though it is quite poor, compared to broiler, in terms of production efficiency. Most research efforts in the past 12 years were devoted to the breeding of this chicken for better feed efficiency while maintaining its meat quality. Breeding goals and strategies were established after 3 years of research works. Several strains of the country chicken were founded and chicks are also reproduced to supply the research uses in nutrition, physiology, behavior, and veterinary medicine in the Department as well as other research institutes. Merits in the warm wet climate, and better egg shell quality, provide a room in utilizing the chicken to provide other exotic breeds of chickens. Five local varieties of country chickens have been collected around the island and maintained as potential genetic resources.

More recent studies have focused upon the transgenic rabbit (growth hormone gene, factor IX), transgenic chicken (MT-hGH gene), gene mapping by in situ hybridization and molecular cloning of milk protein genes from bovine genomic library. Our overall goals are to express transgenes in animals to improve their growth performance, milk composition and vaccine production. We have succeeded in the screening of the bovine genomic DNA containing casein gene sequence. It has been mapped with restriction enzyme, sub-cloned into plasmid and sequenced by dideoxy method. The promoter of bovine casein gene will be fused together with the coding sequence of HBsAg gene for the study of vaccine production in transgenic goat or cow. In vitro and in vivo casein gene expression experiments will also be used in the studies of transgenic goat or cow to improve milk composition.

Research has been focused on the improvement of nutrient utilization, productivity, and management techniques for swine, poultry, goose, dairy cattle, goat, and fish. Current projects include the determination of the nutrient requirements of Taiwan country chickens, the rumen conditions changed by roughage ratio in diets. Effects of manipulation of rumen pH and administration of hormone on milk production in dairy cow and dairy goat are also being studied. The nutritional value and the utilization of various animal and plant by-products by livestock and poultry have been investigated. These by-products include steamed intact or extracted rice bran, steamed wheat bran, defibered pineapple leaf, meat and bone meal, feather meal, and lard pulp.

Research has been conducted on the processing of milk, meat, egg, fur and leather. Current programs include studies of physical and biochemical properties of muscle as influenced by processing, traditional Chinese meat and egg products, fabricated food, and food rheology. Lysozyme extracted from egg white, as an effective food preservative, is one research breakthrough.

Researches on the reproductive phenomenon in pigs and cattle were conducted during the past years. These projects included the effects of various conditions of pregnancy on uterus growth, uterine protein secretion, and progesterone and 17 beta-estradiol levels in plasma. besides, the biochemical composition of follicular fluid in induced growing follicle and the practical applications of hormonal control of reproduction, such as synchronization of estrus cycle, superovulation, and early embryo transfer, were also investigated. Moreover, the change of ATPase activity and amino acid levels in fresh and frozen boar semen and the effect of dietary amino acid supplement on semen characteristics were evaluated. Research is being conducted to develop an adequate in vitro fertilization and culture system and to prolong the storage-time by deep-freezing of intact and micromanipulated embryos of rabbit, swine, and cattle.

Many researches, such as the determination of the economical scale of pig farms in Taiwan, the usage of microcomputers in ration formulation and daily accounts of ranch, bio-economic models for the simulation of the production and management of the growing pigs and sows, computer simulation model of broiler growth, effect of stocking density on the hog performance and validation of a pig growth model, a computer simulation model for the optimum market weight of the growing pigs, the information systems of hog marketing, the growth curves of various carcasses of broilers, computer model for the simulation of sow reproduction, the decision-making management of the simulation model of broiler growth, a microcomputer expert system for broiler farm management, the management decision-making support system for sow replacement, the management systems of dairy farms, computerized feed formulation for maximizing profit, the building and validation of the computer simulation model for the growth of suckling pigs, the simulation model to predict feed intake of dairy cattles, records management and pedigree searching for breeding pigs, cow culling decision support system, and decision support system of searching and preliminary diagnosis on pig disease have been conducted in the past 10 years. Current projects focus on management decision support system for layer farms, recording and management of dairy goat, computre-aid system for planning of pig housing, and the integration of feed formulation and inventory system.