Pure bred vs. Mixed breed

centrarchid said:

The Moonshiner said:

Are you saying over 99% will only be producing chicks that wont live past a few years?

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I am saying the birds will leave no descendents. Hens and roosters can as individuals, produce chicks until they are pushing a decade old if properly cared for. What happens is most chicks produced will not produce offspring themselves.

As a whole, we treat the chickens as something that is used for a while then discarded. Like paper towels.

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Sophocles said:

That's the case with most animals that are kept as pets. Most mammals are just spayed/neutered because we can't take and eat their eggs. Really, chickens are probably the species of common 'pets' that's allowed to reproduce the most by owners in developed countries.

I don't agree with your analogy, what matters is the Quality of Life the animals have, both those owned by amateurs and the hatcheries/breeders that distribute them. An animal isn't hurt by a lack of offspring.

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peaceisgreen said:

also commercial breeds are breed to mature quickly make lots of eggs quickly or put on weight quickly and subsequently expire quickly where as heritage breeds are specifically breed to mature slower start laying later put on weight slower and lay seasonally which is easier on the birds system allowing them to live much longer

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Ridgerunner said:

Only if the breeder is breeding for that. For example, if a breeder is breeding Delaware to enhance the traditional Delaware traits as a meat bird, how fast that bird meets butcher weight and its feed to meat conversion are important traits. Longevity is not. Slow maturing certainly is not, that would be counterproductive.

Heritage breeds were developed for a specific purpose. Sometimes that might be meat, eggs, or decoration. Sometimes a combination, like eggs and meat. Some were bred to be commercial, either meat or eggs. Some were bred to be backyard flocks. Some were bred to be meat and eggs, the dual purpose. Some were purely to be pretty or unusual, such as Silkie or Polish. To me, heritage does not mean show quality, it means productivity or use as it was meant to be used. That means different breeds are supposed to have different traits. You can’t lump them all together.

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Ridgerunner said:

Only if the breeder is breeding for that. For example, if a breeder is breeding Delaware to enhance the traditional Delaware traits as a meat bird, how fast that bird meets butcher weight and its feed to meat conversion are important traits. Longevity is not. Slow maturing certainly is not, that would be counterproductive.

Heritage breeds were developed for a specific purpose. Sometimes that might be meat, eggs, or decoration. Sometimes a combination, like eggs and meat. Some were bred to be commercial, either meat or eggs. Some were bred to be backyard flocks. Some were bred to be meat and eggs, the dual purpose. Some were purely to be pretty or unusual, such as Silkie or Polish. To me, heritage does not mean show quality, it means productivity or use as it was meant to be used. That means different breeds are supposed to have different traits. You can’t lump them all together.

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The Moonshiner said:

Quote: Yeah, fair enough, hence why I put pets in quotation mark, the term I should have used is domesticated animal but that takes a lot longer to type

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LadyVictorian said:

Actually from people I talk to purebreds tend to live longer than egg producing highbreeds. Someone had a heritage bird that lived to 16 before a hawk got her, she was a silkie hen. That same customer said all 3 of her red sex link hens died of a prolapsed vent at only 5 years old. She said most of her heritage breeds live 13+ years. My main reason for getting heritage birds, better health/last longer. Granted you get them from an actual breeder and not a hatchery but I don't count hatchery birds as heritage birds.

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The Moonshiner said:

Quote: This is not a logical statement. If you have a rooster of any breed, and a hen of any breed, they will produce offspring, and there will be successive generations. If new blood is not mixed into an existing flock, you may eventually end up with a "land race" breed. That is where the "Icelandics" came from. Hybrid vigor is something to be appreciated by the mixed gene pool achieved when crossing 2 dis-similar breeds. You will even see hybrid vigor when crossing a production bird with a heritage bird.

Perhaps the paper towel analogy is appropriate for some one who rotates successive flocks of production hybrids through their coop. But, this analogy does not hold true for the person who is keeping a back yard flock and breeding their own birds from that flock. I would venture to say that a lot of us are doing that, and our flocks are self sustaining.

Ridgerunner said:

Quote: Well explained, with good examples, RR.

The Moonshiner said:

Quote: Agreed.

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centrarchid said:

@lazy gardener

You folks are not getting my points at all. I have no problems with assertions that hybrids perform as well as purebreds in terms of productivity, fertility or longevity. What differs is the value of the hybrids in the eyes of other people. You are correct about how heritage breeds are developed and by now better know I understand the concept based on work with American Dominiques alone.


Look at it this way. In my area which it appears to be typical, roughly 10 households have keep small flocks of chickens during the last decade we have lived here. My family represents one of the households. Every single household outsourced birds at least once during that interval. Those without roosters had to outsource for all replacements. About half of the flocks are hen-only. Some birds aged out based on egg production decline. Most where lost to depredation whether free-ranged or not. More than once I could hear a neighbors flock being destroyed by predators at night. A couple parties completely replaced flocks owing to depredation losses more than once. Most kept flocks with a variety of breeds for the purpose of eye candy. Most offspring produced where hybrids, Most house holds, even when they had a rooster, did not produce chicks. Of those that produced chicks, most did not produce enough chicks to make so they did not also outsource. A few people did sell / give away chicks but those transferred birds where generally not as highly regarded as those purchased directly from a hatchery or breeder.


The pet concept did little more than extend the time required for a bird is replaced by an outsourced bird, hence the paper towel analogy.


If people in my area where not able to outsource chickens, they would either run out of chickens in just a few years or as a community, switch over to breeding more and sourcing locally. I am one of the very few in my area that has a flock that can persist without getting birds from the outside even during a brief 10 years at my present location.

To develop a landrace, you must be able to maintain a population without having it swamped by imports / immigration during the time it takes for a locally adapted gene complex to adapt. Look back at how the Icelandics were developed. Very little if any genetic contributions after population was founded. There flocks, at least in the scale of a country where self sustaining because all birds where locally bred. Contrast that with US and current situation even in Iceland.

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