You know, I've come to see things in a very different way.
For several years we sold meat at the local farmers markets, which on the New England seacoast are huge. I can probably claim rather safely that our farm has put more dressed standard-bred heritage chicken on the market in recent times than most farms in the country. I, in no way, have a romantic view of things. I have put into praxis what most chicken people keep solely as ideas, and this is where I've ended up on this front.
1. Most folks who decide they're going to breed never get past the hovabator.
2. Most folks who decide to market farm do too much to ever get good at any one thing. They'll never be good breeders because they don't have the time to be good breeders because they're trying to get twenty different products to market to etch out the most meager income.
3. "Farmers" who sell eggs and meat for profit are about profit, like anyone else who is doing something for profit. It' not good; it's not bad. It is what it is. They can't lose their shirt on ideals, and half of them don't figure that out until the shirt is being torn from their back. If they don't get the shirt torn from their back, they get a divorce because they're too busy trying to make minimum wage to keep up their marriage.
4. Breeds in an APA sense pre-1850's only existed in pockets, most chickens were mongrels and produced like mongrels.
5. The APA is like the Orthodox Church of chickens, it is what it is, and it's not going to change. Nevertheless, it's going to out last any one of us.
6. That's not necessarily a bad thing.
7. The APA is responsible for the full development into a concretized set of recognized criteria for every single established breed in America today, and the vast majority of breeds that still exist to any degree of quality does so because of the APA. Farmers and homesteaders have done practically nothing at all--at all--to preserve and promote "heritage" poultry, and to the degree that they think that they are independent from the APA guidelines, they're not going to. Obedience is almost always the basis for mastery. The breeds that exist in high quality owe that almost exclusively to APA breeders.
8. Breeding for productive qualities is easy--so easy it gets kind of dull. Breeding for all of the standard points is much more challenging, and therefore, it maintains interest longer.
9. The vast majority--though not all (consider Modern Games)--of all standard-bred large fowl have a standard that will lead to an adequate level of production. That's all a homestead needs, and that's what these breeds are good for. It's a good thing that they are what they are.
10. Basic productivity suffers when birds are overly inbred, but it takes a lot more for them to get to that point than most people on here think. To maintain productive traits breeders need to breed in enough number to select for multiple criteria, which, in my estimation, means not raising more breeds that you can grow out--not just hatch-- a hundred chicks per annum--minimum. Then they need to be held to some basic maturity periods. I'm not talking about pushing them for the absolute best rate of maturity, I'm talking about setting parameters that correspond to healthy development in a timely fashion. This alone will concretize homestead-quality productive qualities.
11. I think that some breeds and varieties in the Standard are simply not going to make it. I think it is more than we'd like to imagine. On the one hand, breeders who are breeding in the kind of number necessary to make really good strides can raise bantams for a fraction of the cost. On the other hand, there simply aren't enough breeders to maintain everything.
12. People play with egg color, but they don't really breed egg color. Legbars are a 20th century British fad that was never anything more than a fairly unattractive bird that no one imported here because they were pathetic little chickens. They still are pathetic little chickens. It's going to take a lot, and I mean a lot, to get them into the Standard, and the kinds of folk raising them aren't going to stick around long enough to get it done, neither are they going to learn enough to do it because, if they were, they would have already learned enough to get rid of them in the first place. Consider Marans breeders. They've already gotten two varieties into the Standard. They are two unique color varieties for a dual-purpose breed. Two colors are more than enough. They're already pushing for Whites and Cuckoos, and the general quality of the already accepted varieties is already dropping. It didn't take long for Welsummers and Barnevelders to fall off the map, why are Marans going to be any different?
13. Currently, a daunting number of breeds and varieties have a mooring with under a handful of breeders--literally. How many breeders of Standard quality Silver Spangled Hamburgs are there remaining? Three? How many breeders of Golden Campines? I know of no strains of truly Standard quality birds remaining in Redcaps, Crevecoeurs, Houdans, La Fleche, most of the Hamburg varieties, Lakenvelders, and Dorkings. I bet if you were to take most of the varieties and breeds remaining, you could narrow it down to under 6--probably more like 2 or 3--strong breeders a piece that raise 100 or more of the variety, if there are any at all. This is where you know there's trouble a'coming.
14. What I'm hoping is that enough breeders will galvanize around the signature varieties of the existing breeds enough to keep them afloat for the next generation. If we can actually get out of our own way enough to focus, we could at least have one variety of each breed worth saving make it forward. Unfortunately, it seems that again and again newcomers are drawn to the more insignificant breeds and varieties.
15. Those who are regular attendees of APA/ABA shows, those who know how to listen and do what they're told--effectively making a kind of apprenticeship--are going to be those who, as they always have been, bring these birds forward.