finding heritage breeders

[OHhappychicks]

I'm quite sure this question has been asked alot, but I'm wanting to find some heritage dual-purpose and meat chickens. I'm interested in Cuckoo marans, dark cornish, freedom rangers (true heritage breed?), RIR, Dorkings, and Buckeyes. I believe someone raises buckeyes here in ohio, (Dave?) I've been reading on heritage meat birds and these breeds keep coming up. How and/or where do you find breeders of these birds? Thanks!

 

[wekiva bird]

Look at the buy, sell area on this site.

 

[Fred's Hens]

First, breeders are more than a bit fussy about who they sell to. In many cases, these breeds are so rare, that most are in the preservation mode. Hatches are somewhat limited. There are only a few hundred chicks available per year. Top breeders only hatch in early spring, normally.

This isn't a snobbery issue. It is simply a reality. Some of the breeds you mentioned are recovering and are slightly more available. There are heritage threads for most breeds, individually, and a heritage large fowl thread. It will take a lot of work, but if your desire is genuine, peruse those threads and politely pm some of the breeders. Good things can happen. Good referrals can be made.

 

[keesmom]

Freedom Rangers are a recent meat bird cross and not a Heritage breed. Neither are Marans.

Check out the breed threads for the ones you are interested in to find breeders, and maybe narrow your list some.

 

[OHhappychicks]

thank you all for your info! I will follow your advice!

 

[ChickenJerk]

The American Poultry Assn. National Meet is being held at the Southern Ohio Poultry Assn. Fall show the first weekend in October at the fairgrounds in Lucasville, OH. About 50 miles from Hillsboro. At this show you will see many of the recognized breeds. Many of which are considered "heritage". Remember though, these birds are raised without consideration to production qualities.

There will not be a meat bird in the place. The Cornish,Giants, New Hampshire's, etc. of the exhibition type can hardly be considered meat birds. Since they grow so slowly and are very uneconomical. Beautiful yes, practical - no.

Layers- There will be Leghorns there that lay pretty well. Some other exhibition birds lay fairly well. Those would be the RIRs, Rocks, NH's. But none of them will even come close to what their commercial cousins will do.

Remember that all the birds bred to the APA Standard, the exhibition birds, are today not much more than "ornamentals." No matter what the left over nomenclature of the 1920's says they are little more than flowers.

Remember that just because someone has an incubator that hardly makes them a breeder intent on improving the breed. It makes them a "hatcher".

Remember that commercial hatcheries that supply the backyard purchasers with utility chicks are hatchers. The chicks of "breeds" they provide will never look like the pictures in the Standard and seldom do they look as good as the picture the hatchery uses to promote them. You will find that hatchery stock tends to mature faster than exhibition stock. Exhibition large chickens will become much larger but only with a lot of time an feed expended doing so. Hatchery bantam chickens will always be larger than those from an exhibition line. Hatchery birds can be expected to lay better than their show cousins.

Commercial birds are awesome at what they do.-

Meat chickens, white egg layers, brown egg layers and meat ducks are excelled at producing what they are bred to produce. If you want something more than meat or eggs look to something else. You may get that something else that you were looking for but from those birds you will never get as much meat or as many eggs as the commercial types. And what you do get from either the exhibition or utility breeds will cost more feed dollars than you want to think about.