Abstract
Free-range chicken production still remains in the rural areas where large chicken meat companies do not secure their chicken meat. The free-range method is originally used to obtain chicken meat as a self-sufficient agricultural product. Thus, there are no standards, regulations or controls for the product and the method because the meat is not viewed as a commodity for sale to others. However, the meat is sold at small markets in rural areas by numbers of small farmers, and this, in fact, causes some problems. Against this background, an indigenous chicken production project was started by the Chiang Mai Research Center of the Department of Livestock Development in 2008, in a northern area that is one of the less developed areas in Thailand. The purpose of this project is to improve agricultural income by introducing chicken rising as a sideline. Indigenous chicken production is different from traditional free-range raising method. This paper focuses on this project and how it works to prevent the problems of free-range chicken production, and concludes by identifying the good and bad aspects of this project, also identifying the possibility of this project as a rural development model that can aid development not only of northern areas but also of other areas.
