Poultry is an excellent place to start when
discussing and planning heritage breeds. In the U.S. today, 99% of
all turkeys raised are Broad-Breasted Whites. These turkeys were
designed totally for mass meat production. However, they don’t have
what it takes to work well on homesteads and small farms.
While they are exceptional at converting feed to
breast meat, the result of this improvement is a loss of the bird’s
ability to successfully mate and produce fertile eggs without
intervention. This is why both the Broad Breasted White and the
Broad Breasted Bronze turkeys require artificial insemination to produce
fertile eggs. Not a real good option for the average homesteader to
consider.
Consider several
other turkeys that are heritage breeds and what they were bred to offer:
productivity as well as specific color patterns to show off the bird’s
innate beauty. Heritage turkeys are reproduced and genetically
maintained through natural mating, with expected fertility rates of
70-80%. They have long, productive life spans with breeding hens
commonly productive for 5-7 years and breeding toms for 3-5 years.
There are several types of heritage turkeys; the most common breeds are
the Lavender, Bourbon Red, Narragansett, Slate, and Royal Palm.
Common heritage laying chickens are the Delaware, New
Hampshire, Rhode Island Red, Barred Rock & Speckled Sussex. What
makes them so different from the popular commercial breeds are the egg
color, their
better health, and their knack for surviving the free range lifestyle.
Heritage breeds live longer and adapt well to outdoor
survival, completely different from your average commercial chickens that
are kept in artificial, environmentally-controlled henhouses - or in
smaller individual cages.
The commercial poultry industry uses highly specialized
breeds which have split the genetics of the original breeds to focus
singularly on either meat or egg production. Heritage chickens offer
the homesteader a sweet combination of both fresh eggs and good meat.
We
raise a few Barred Rocks and Australorps because they are a nice
meat-chicken that also happens to lay a large brown eggs that are
favorites at our house. It also helps that that their dark color
enables them to blend in well with the surrounding environment - this
means they don’t stand out to predators, and are far less likely to become
some wild animal’s lunch!
Research the wide variety of heritage chickens, turkeys,
and ducks that are available to you in order to see which will work best
for your setup.
As a result of the pork-chop-express attitude of
commercial meat production, 75 percent of pigs in the U.S. now come from
only three main breeds. They have lost the genetic characteristics
that help pigs survive in their natural, outdoor habitat.
Most are light skinned and used to lives spent in
air-conditioned and heated comfort, away from the harshness of the outdoor
environment. However, pigs are healthiest when they spend at least
part of their lives on pasture, thus the coarse hair and dark-skinned
genes are important for this type of lifestyle.
