This is exactly what we are intending to do. Leave it to Joel Salatin to word it perfectly! He's great!!!
My husband just read this blog entry to me from one of his favorite sites:
There's a great Joel Salatin article, not available online, "Heritage Breeds vs Nativized Genetics", where he punctures the heritage breed trend and explains an alternative that is both shocking and obvious: farmers should just make new breeds that are adapted to their own particular conditions and farming models, which is where heritage breeds came from in the first place.
I think it's borderline abusive to take a Scottish Highlander and put it in Alabama. Yet such a displaced animal is touted as God's gift to humanity under the guise of preserving gene pools. Folks, we aren't running a zoo. Wouldn't it be better for each of us to begin systematically building nativized genetics in our herds and flocks? Why stop the adaptation clock? Why not continue the process here in our own bioregions? In the future, we could have a hundred new American breeds bio-regionally specific. Over time, this would actually add diversity to the gene pool rather than limiting it to what it was a century ago, or what it is today.
One thing he specifically suggests is for egg farmers to "isolate the hens that lay the darkest-yolk eggs since yolk color indicates aggressive scavenging", which means better nutrition and lower feed expenses; and for meat birds, he says you could do the same thing by looking at how dark the fat is.
My husband just read this blog entry to me from one of his favorite sites:
There's a great Joel Salatin article, not available online, "Heritage Breeds vs Nativized Genetics", where he punctures the heritage breed trend and explains an alternative that is both shocking and obvious: farmers should just make new breeds that are adapted to their own particular conditions and farming models, which is where heritage breeds came from in the first place.
I think it's borderline abusive to take a Scottish Highlander and put it in Alabama. Yet such a displaced animal is touted as God's gift to humanity under the guise of preserving gene pools. Folks, we aren't running a zoo. Wouldn't it be better for each of us to begin systematically building nativized genetics in our herds and flocks? Why stop the adaptation clock? Why not continue the process here in our own bioregions? In the future, we could have a hundred new American breeds bio-regionally specific. Over time, this would actually add diversity to the gene pool rather than limiting it to what it was a century ago, or what it is today.
One thing he specifically suggests is for egg farmers to "isolate the hens that lay the darkest-yolk eggs since yolk color indicates aggressive scavenging", which means better nutrition and lower feed expenses; and for meat birds, he says you could do the same thing by looking at how dark the fat is.
