A man in the northern province of Hung Yen has spent up to 40 years in breeding Dong Tao chicken which in the past was used as a delicacy offered to kings. He now owns two extremely valuable jars of rice liquor with this kind of chicken soaked in them. 

Le Xuan Vet, 82, is among the most famous Dong Tao chicken breeders in Khoai Chau District. After returning home from the army in 1976, Vet decided to specialise in breeding Dong Tao chicken. He focused on the kind with huge bulbous legs covered in red scales which were quite rare and had a life-span of 4-5 years.

Vet considers Dong Tao chicken as his friends. Particularly, he used two among those which weighed up to 6 kilogrammes each to soak rice liquor when they became old and weak. 

According to Vet, when they were too old and couldn’t be bred anymore, he did not want to sell them or eat them, so he decided to keep them as souvenirs.  

After being preserved in the jars, many people like them and asked him for buying them. Some said that they were willing to buy each of the 25-litre jars VND70 million (USD3,181), but he turned down their proposal.

He was very careful and spent much time on preserving the two chicken. He used both lemon and vinegar to clean the chicken before soaking them into the alcohol of 70 degrees. 

Dtinews