Heritage Chicken Breeds

Ethel, a Buff OrpingtonI have been thinking a lot about heritage breeds, because the topic of heritage livestock seems to crop up a lot in articles about eating locally, sustainable living, that kind of thing.  Heritage breeds are valuable not just because they are old and interesting bits of living history (although they are).  Most heritage breeds were developed to be hardy, in keeping with the times in which they lived.

Today's livestock is… well, I don't know if "coddled" is the right word.  Highly controlled.  The rise of ubiquitous antibiotics has meant that disease resistance is not the great draw that it once was.  Of course, that just means that today's monoculture farming is just one small step away from a huge disaster.  For example, just about every meat breed chicken today is a Cornish Cross, and that lack of genetic diversity is just asking for trouble in the long term.

Heritage breeds were created in hardscrabble times.  Farm animals were expected to fend for themselves, which meant that they were stronger, more resilient, and more resourceful.  Chickens in particular have often been kept as an animal that is expected to feed itself, with the possible exception of a scoop of scratch or cracked corn once a day.  Until fairly recently, chickens were often allowed to run loose.  This meant that they not only had to forage for their own feed, they also had to have the smarts to avoid predators, and the physical constitution to weather all manner of inclement weather.

In fact, in a sense, everything other than Cornish X or the ISA Brown and ISA Warren (the battery hen egg laying breed used in commercial egg farming) could be considered a "heritage breed."  Mother Earth News recently published a list of 23 heritage chicken breeds which they recommend for the backyard poultry keeper.  (This list was originally printed in 1973, but was republished on their website over the summer.)  

The list of breeds includes the Araucana, which I would be cautious about.  There is an entire category of "chickens which lay blue, blue-green, or green eggs," and most of them are sold as Araucanas or Americaunas.  However, most of them are actually "Easter Eggers," which is a hybrid mutt chicken that happens to carry the blue gene.  If you want to keep Araucanas, and you definitely should, be sure that you are buying your chicks from a reputable specialty breeder.

Many of the other breeds listed can also be found in springtime at your local feed store, including two that I have myself - the Rhode Island Red and the Buff Orpington.  The Black Australorp is also listed, and I would definitely look into raising at least one Australorp, as they are famed egg layers.  In fact, the current world record holder for "most eggs laid in a year" belongs to a Black Australorp!

Luckily for the backyard chicken owner, it is not easy to find either the Cornish Cross or the ISA Warren at the feed store or poultry breeder.  Yet another reason why raising your own chickens is the greatest!