Bolinao: The Native Line With a Measured Feed Conversion, and What It Actually Measures
8.93–10.27Eggs
Single trial, two origin groups, 48 birds each, August 2022 to March 2023. Tadeo DB (2024), August 2026.
not publishedMature weight, rooster
The twelve-week weights quoted for this line trace only to secondary write-ups with no measurement behind them.
not publishedMature weight, hen
The twelve-week weights quoted for this line trace only to secondary write-ups with no measurement behind them.
not publishedTo market
No Philippine source publishes days to a stated market weight for this line.
Native typeFree-range standard
Named in PNS/BAFS 262:2018. Slaughter not earlier than 90 days.
The short answer
Bolinao is the Pangasinan line, and it has something none of the DOST-PCAARRD four has: an eight-month laying trial with the tables printed. 8.93 eggs per hen per month, 44.10 g per egg, 41.01 per cent hatchability, and a feed conversion of 2.72. Basahin po nang mabuti ang huling numero: it is grams of feed per gram of egg, hindi kilo ng feeds kada kilo ng manok.
Source Tadeo DB (2024), Diversitas Journal 9(1 Special):0480-0494 (read on August 22, 2026)
The trial, and what it covers
Tadeo (2024) ran two groups of true-to-type Bolinao at the ASIST demo-site in Lagangilang, Abra, from August 2022 to March 2023: 48 hens and 8 roosters per group at a 5:1 ratio, in 2 by 5 metre pens, on breeder feeds at 100 to 150 g per bird per day fed twice, with Trichanthera and other green forage at midday.
The two groups differed only in where the birds came from. Group B was stock brought from Bolinao, Pangasinan. Group A was the same true-to-type line already established in Abra.
| Measured over eight months | Bolinao-origin | Abra-origin |
|---|---|---|
| Eggs per hen per month | 8.93 | 10.27 |
| Hen-house egg production | 29.65% | 34.13% |
| Egg weight | 44.10 g | 42.46 g |
| Egg mass per hen per day | 13.10 g | 14.54 g |
| Feed conversion, feed per egg mass | 2.72 | 2.83 |
| Hatchability | 41.01% | 47.83% |
| Chick weight at hatch | 27.09 g | 27.49 g |
The FCR here is a layer figure
This is the number most likely to be lifted out of context, kaya diretsahan na: here is what it is.
The paper computes FCR as mean feed intake divided by mean egg weight, reported as grams of feed per gram of egg produced. A broiler FCR is kilos of feed per kilo of liveweight gained. Those are two different quantities and they do not sit side by side. Quoting 2.72 as though a Bolinao converts feed to meat at that rate would be wrong by a wide margin and in a direction that flatters the bird.
The comparison the paper does draw is with commercial layers, and it does not flatter: both groups sat above 2.2, which the poultry production indices it cites treat as the level that is advantageous to a farm. The author’s explanation is the obvious one. A hen laying nine eggs a month eats nearly what a hen laying twenty eats, and the ratio carries the difference.
| FCR 2.72 | Feed per gram of eggA laying figure. Not comparable with a broiler FCR of roughly 1.6 kg of feed per kilo of liveweight. |
|---|---|
| 8.93 eggs per hen per month | Measured, eight monthsAugust 2022 to March 2023. No annual figure was measured, so no annual figure is printed here. |
| Hatchability 41.01% | Measured, eight monthsRange 32.04 to 52.00 per cent by month. Well under the recalled figures raiser surveys produce. |
| Mature weight | Not publishedThis trial weighed eggs and chicks, not adults. Day-old weight for Bolinao is 25.80 g, cited by Nombrefia et al. (2023) from Lambio (2010). |
The birds from Bolinao did worse than the birds already in Abra
This is the most interesting result in the paper, and it is not the one the title promises.
Group A, the Abra-established stock, out-laid the Pangasinan-sourced birds in seven of eight months and by 1.34 eggs per hen per month on average. It also hatched better, 47.83 against 41.01 per cent. The author attributes it to acclimatisation: group B had travelled from a different province and a different environment, and its worst month by far was its first, at 15.00 per cent hen-house production against group A’s 28.54.
That has a direct read for a keeper. Stock from the home province of a line is not automatically the better bird sa lugar mo. Provenance is a story about genetics; the first laying season is a story about adaptation, and the second one showed up harder in this trial.
One column went the other way and it is worth keeping. The Bolinao-origin eggs were significantly heavier, 44.10 g against 42.46 g, and consistently so across the whole eight months. Kung itlog ang binebenta mo kada piraso, that is the column you are paid on.
What is still not known
No mature weight. No days to market. No grow-out feed intake. No annual egg total measured over a full year rather than eight months.
Bolinao also sits outside the DOST-PCAARRD breed information system entirely, so it carries none of the fertility, hatchability or age-at-first-egg figures that Darag, ZamPen, Camarines and Boholano get. What it has instead is one careful trial with its tables printed, at mas mabigat po iyon kaysa sa apat na hilera sa isang database na walang pinagkunan.
Questions people actually ask
How many eggs does a Bolinao hen lay?
The best measured figure is 8.93 eggs per hen per month, averaged over eight months at the ASIST demo-site in Lagangilang, Abra, and reported by Tadeo (2024). No annual total is published for this line, and multiplying a monthly mean by twelve is not the same thing as measuring a year.
What is the Bolinao egg weight? Show the answer
44.10 g, measured daily on a 1-gram scale over eight months. That is heavier than the Abra-origin comparison group at 42.46 g and heavier than every figure DOST-PCAARRD publishes for the four documented lines, the highest of which is ZamPen at 43.6 g.
What is the feed conversion of a Bolinao? Show the answer
2.72 grams of feed per gram of egg, from the same trial. It is a laying FCR, not a grow-out FCR, so it cannot be compared with a broiler figure of about 1.6 kg of feed per kilo of liveweight. The paper notes both groups sat above the 2.2 figure it treats as the useful threshold.
What hatchability should I expect from Bolinao eggs? Show the answer
The measured mean over eight months was 41.01 per cent, ranging from 32.04 to 52.00 by month. That is far below the 70 to 77 per cent DOST-PCAARRD publishes for the four documented lines and below the 79 to 88 per cent that raiser surveys report from recall.