A Guide to Practical Breeding Philippine Lemons, 2012 | Page 8

from which they started the line breeding back to the cock.
As examples to illustrate this point Pit Games interviewed the originators of the lemon
84, the lemon guapo, and the main man behind the batchoy lemons.
The lemon 84
According to the personal account of Rafael ―Paeng‖ C. Araneta (RCA) he got a pea
comb fowl from Duke Hulsey in the mid sixties with leg band number 84. He bred this cock to
his earlier hulsey lemon hens out of stock from his friend, the late Batchoy Alunan.
He then mated the female offspring of this mating back to the father to produce threequarters of the original lemon 84 cock. The males of this generation, Paeng told this writer, just
kept on winning and became so popular. These he called the lemon 84s in reference to the leg
band number of the original cock.
From hereon, in almost every generation, he applied both the brother sister mating and
the breeding back to the father methods. At some point, some green legged fowl were produced. Thus, he was able to create sub-families of green legged lemons, making the lemon 84
as, perhaps, the only lemon strain that formally has a sub-family of green legged fowl.
The 84’s come in both pea comb and straight comb. The straight combs do not look
much different from some of the other lemon strains in Negros. And, according to Paeng, the
old 84’s fought similar to the other lemons except that they were much quicker.
At the height of the popularity of the lemon 84 many Negros breeders claimed to have
the strain when in fact what they got were lemons of other variety. Paeng, however, admitted to
having lent 84’s to Mayor Jalandoni and Tony Trebol. Thus, these two top breeders might have
really bred the 84’s in addition to the equally formidable lemon lines they already had. It was
also possible that from these two gentlemen the lemon 84 bloodline was spread out to their
friends and buyers.
Today the lemon 84 bloodline is very much alive not only in the hands of many breeders
all over the country, but also in the farm of Paeng Araneta himself.
Better than ever lemon 84.
―My lemon 84 now is better than ever,‖ Paeng told this writer. ―although, so is the competition,‖ he added.
When asked why, and what’s the difference between the 84 of the old