Heritage chickens are rather new in the world of chickens. Well ‘heritage’ anything is new in both plant and animals. By new I mean it’s really only in the last 50+ years that ‘heritage’ animals and plants have become big. With the needs for more efficient and productive agriculture system the birds that many people think roamed around the farm yards of yesteryear have dwindled. Or so we think. After talking about it ( to myself), reading lot’s of old literature ( 100 or more years old), and discussing with other poultrymen and poultrywomen I have come to the conclusion that the world today has a very skewed perception on the farms of yesteryear. Much like the farms of today they needed to be as efficient as they could and produce as much as they could.
Anyone that has ever worked extensively with todays ‘heritage’ breeds might have noticed that they are not all efficient at all! They take forever to grow in comparison to four way meat crosses, lay fewer eggs than their commercial counterparts and they eat non stop! So how could farms produce lots of nice plump and tender chickens back when there was only ‘heritage’ breeds. Well one method to keep meat tender was caponize the cockerels ( that is to remove the testes from the cockerel at a young age). However this was time consuming. But wait... flashback time... in the good old days chicken was not that popular, because they would oftentimes be old and tough!
I will be using the LIght Sussex as the example in this paper as it is a breed I work with a lot and is on it’s right track to being a true ‘heritage’ breed. But before we start any content let’s get some definitions out of the way! I just want to deal with how I define a heritage chicken because everyone and their mother defines it differently ( no joke!) here is the definition of heritage i use :
Heritage chickens are the types that were popular and common before modern commercial chickens took over all the meat and egg production.
(This is also the definition of True North Heritage hatchery uses).
So what does this mean? Well more or less it means any breed developed before large scale commercial poultry production started to take place ( so say early 1900’s-1920’s).
I bet right now you are saying “But that’s not what a heritage bird is defined by heritage animal associations”. You are correct take for example the ALBC they define a heritage chicken as :
“A Heritage Egg can only be produced by an American Poultry Association Standard breed. A Heritage Chicken is hatched from a heritage egg sired by an American Poultry Association Standard breed established prior to the mid-20th century, is slow growing, naturally mated with a long productive outdoor life. “ (http://www.albc-usa.org/heritagechicken/definition.html)
The way the ALBC defines a heritage chicken means that only breeds that have a show standard that could be judged at a show are ‘real’ heritage chickens. Now to me that just does not seem right. All over the world there are
I hope to give a new look on heritage birds, what they meant to farmers around the world, and more so why farmers did not have heritage birds on their farms. I hope to make the muddy water a bit less muddy and for you to be able to be able to breed heritage birds the way they were meant to be. My methods and thoughts might seem a bit unorthodox but they are what’s needed to sustain heritage birds as they were bred for and not just make chickens pretty living lawn ornaments!
So now it’s your time to sit back and read a modern take from a fresh young poultryman about heritage breeds, how they should be bred, and why they should be bred like that. If we want heritage breeds to be around for centuries we need them to be bred in a safe way that will ensure all the genetics that make these birds the breed they are stay like that! Sit back, open your mind to new, fresh ideas ,and have fun!
You can often find me on my computer when I am not working with the chickens. When I am on the computer some of the time I am digging up old literature from as far back as I can go. Why? Well it’s because the farmers back then knew how to breed and breed extremely well. When I started reading the old old books and got talking to biologists and reading about population genetics. It started to make sense and now that I look back I see why.
Today we think that farmers used to raise these heritage breeds that we see running around on our farms. I can tell you this for certain they did not... have a breed per say. When we start to look geographically we see breeds like Sussex, and Plymouth rocks both in their respective home countries played a large role of chicken production up until the production birds came to roost. If we take the Barred Plymouth rock we find that this colour variant came very popular with farmers because the barred colour masks most other colours nicely so farmers could breed with his nabougers, sons, daughters, husbands rooster and not see any difference in the overall colour of the flock but still benefit from hybrid vigour.
Now it’s time to start the chicken coop time machine up and do some jet setting at the same time. Woooosh! Perfect. The time period is the 1600’s to 1800’s in the Sussex region of Great Britain. Here in the Sussex region of Great Britain is where the Sussex breed of chicken started! Have you ever wondered if some of these old breeds have a creator? Well most of the ones don’t! The Sussex breeds as we know it today is very... No extremely different than the breed of this time period. The Sussex we have today are so different than the Sussex of yesteryear because we do not add new blood when needed. Farmers of this time period would have noticed where their chickens egg production was slacking and when cockerels were getting smaller every year! This would be unacceptable. So do you think he would go looking for a) another new Sussex rooster b) Go to the next town and trade with some random farmer there ?
Time to answer! nine times out of ten the farmer would have went to the next town over to trade with another random farmer, or he would have got a new rooster off a peddler. So farmers back then were just concerned about the productivity of their birds rather than the look.
So now let’s go back to the current day and take a look at the Sussex and Plymouth rock. I would like to ask you a question and that is what colour of each breed is more prominent. I suspect that the answer would be Barred Plymouth rocks, and Speckled Sussex.
When I talk to my grandfather I see this old type of farmer in him! He’s only in his early 80’s. I often tell him the prices of what sell a chick for or live animal. His response is “I wouldn’t give ya 50 cents for your whole flock”. I often attributed this response to natural inflation you know “ well back in his day that’s what it would have been worth” but now I am rethinking this. He knows that the best chickens with egg laying and meat characteristics are crossed up with something!
So birds that were used on the farms of yesteryear are absolutely and positively different than their counterparts found today. Farmers traded chickens in those farms. Today with heritage breeds it’s almost unheard of to use more than one line or add new blood. And if you do you are almost looked down upon by poultry enthusiasts for destroying that line. But this notion of pure bred chickens is really new. Domesticated chickens date back ten’s of thousands of years so when I say new it is in term of the domestication age of chickens.
I live in a farming area and am a young farmer myself. I used to visit farms and wonder why on earth they would cross two different breeds of cows, or sheep, or goats. But now it is clear that they do this for the benefit of hybrid vigour. So they know what they are doing! So today we see breed mixing on many production cattle farms ( beef more so and to a lesser extent dairy).
I show poultry but I have chosen to build the barn before painting it. I have chosen to maintain production traits before I even think about having one that looks good enough to show. There are some people that maintain very closed flocks. These are what I would call almost genetic copies of each other because they have been line bred for so long. Don’t get me wrong there is nothing bad with line breeding so long as you do it carefully. The problem I am predicting now is we are relying on line breeding way to much. I was shocked when reading on the internet one person saying that adding new stock is “very dangerous”. How can it be dangerous un less you don’t know how to breed? Adding new stock may bring out some ugly characteristics from your chickens but the hybrid vigour and the infusion of genes it adds to your genetic to work with rockets sky high.
Shows are a no? I love showing. While I might not like everyone else that shows I like showing off what I have done. Unfortunately people forget to realize that shows are new to chickens. Only being around for the last ~200 - 250 years. I maintain that breeding for show characteristics first will cause you to have a bird that well looks great and has very little function. Or the function that it does have completely sucks. However if you breed and select for production traits if standards were written correctly they should match up with them given time and selection abilities.
The commercial ( and also free range) broilers we have today are some of the best band-aid solutions ever! When these broilers were first created it was to fill an ever growing need for cheap protein. Chickens being small seemed like a great candidate and boy they were! These terminal four way crosses are meat producing machines unlike the world has ever seen before. I am not sure if you know what a four way cross is or not so let me explain. In a four way cross you have grandparent lines and parent lines. The grandparent lines produce the parent lines. The parent lines produce the actual chicks that grow and become meat. However these almost unchanging commercial broilers were never intended for the long haul. They were a quick fix to a problem.
But it is clear hobbyists think that these terminal crosses are a bad thing. Truly if the demand for chickens could have been meant with high quality a consumer demands and yields that farmers need by ‘heritage’ chickens the probly would have used them. But ‘heritage’ chickens are just inefficient and will never be efficient enough.
Now in North America we have ‘American Bresse’. Bresse the red,white,blue breed of chicken famous in france for the excellent quality chicken it produces. Can never be the answer outside of France. Like champagne, France controls it’s Bresse breeders seriously and these ‘American Bresse’ are merely a backyard bird that should not have the name ‘Bresse’ involved with them at all. They are not the same birds that Bresse producers have access to. But Bresse are a heritage meat bird being around for ~250 - ~500 ish years.
So now breeding heritage chickens for their true use involves starting with as many as you can feasibly have (for me that’s around 200 at the most). Selecting your best hen’s a roosters - this does not mean looks. This means length of keel, how many fingers you can fit in the vent, weight records, who matured earliest and when. When breeding for a true heritage bird don’t scared to take lot’s of records. The more records the better. And add new blood - before you think you need it. There is nothing better than some hybrid vigor.
My advice would be to start with some eggs/chicks/breeders from any one you can find that has them. Though distinct separate lines would be best
All the best and thanks for the read!
-Colin
