Heritage Poultry vs. Heirloom Seeds

[HaikuHeritageFarm]

While reading this article, I couldn't help but draw comparisons to the Heritage Poultry movement.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/24/garden/24seeds.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2

We might be able to learn a few things.

 

[cybercat]

Heirloom seeds have been around for years. It all came about because people wanted to save their own seed. Which you can not so with hybreds. It is not a matter of taste as the hybreds do have it with the home gardner but a matter of money and not speanding it every year on seeds.

Heritage chickens is a whole nother ballgame. As that relates to ALBC keeping livestock gentics open. Making sure their are enough bloodlines. This has nothing to do with taste but breeding.

 

[gallorojo]

Thanks for the great link, Rachel.

I linked it to my facebook page, very cool. Just as a bit of backstory, I am a listed member of Seed Savers Exchange. I also am a professional grower of flowers, and I sell eggs as a sideline, as well. I could go on about this forever, but, I really can't waste the time and space, so I will try to summarize my thoughts. Hybrids are more uniform and vigorous. At my job, I use mostly hybrids, for the uniformity, and vigor. A basic knowledge of genetics will confirm this of hybrids. Hybrids are NOT always any better in any other way, the rest of the" hybrids is better" idea, is crap IMO. All Hybrids bring to the table are vigor, and predictability. They are often less resistant to disease, and require far more inputs, than non-hybrids, but not always. Hybrids are neither new nor evil, my Great Grandfather used to have a small hatchery that sold Black Sex links in the 1920's. If you don't care to do the work of selection and breeding, than, hybrids may be your best bet. Hybrids certainly can outproduce non-hybrids, that is usually a given-but at the cost of not being able to reproduce themselves, and not being able to be selected to suit your personal needs. In my home garden, we do not grow any hybrids, not because of any hate for them, but, because I want to be independent of having to buy in new stock, and, primarily, I want to breed/select my own strain or variety of every crop I grow. Therein lies the beauty of non-hybrids, you can breed and select them to suit your exact needs. You can find varieties that are locally adapted, or you can make them. I feel very strongly that everyone seriously interested in "homesteading" whatever that means today, needs to select or breed their own strains of everything!!!! It is impossible to maintain a variety of something without some changes, hopefully, we can direct these to our own advantage, to suit our local needs. Not to mention to maintain the spirit at least of an old variety. So, how does it all relate to "Heritage Poultry"? I think the real niche for Heritage Poultry has got to be among the modern homesteaders, those who can appreciate that they can reproduce themselves in like kind. The various hybrids are fine for most people, and we will never sell most people on the old breeds-only a tiny percentage of people save seeds, or breed animals. I would just like to see more self suffciency, homesteading, type people get away from raising the awful Cornish x's, and hybrid corns, and start working with some grand old breeds of poultry, or grains, or whatever. These people GET IT with tomatoes, they just need to get it with the harder things.

 

[RareBreedFancier]

Interesting link. I grow heirloom veg and fruit trees and raise heritage poultry. I like to be able to save seed and encourage adaption to my harsh local climate. I like that I can raise chickens that will reproduce themselves and I can select those to improve traits I desire. I like that I'm preserving old and rare genetics too.

I do think they taste better, could just be that they are super fresh but the food fresh from the garden is so much better than what I can get at the shops. I have actually chosen my main breed of chicken because they historically have a superior flavor. I'll find out what mine taste like down the track.

I also like the rare and unusual options available, be it interesting colored and shaped veg or blue, green and chocolate colored eggs and pretty feathers.

Oh, and if someone wants to send me one, I'd gladly take the ’36 Olds, I love old vehicles.

 

[vnsseed]

Quote:

Couldn't have said it better!!

 

[HaikuHeritageFarm]

I find it interesting that everyone sees this article as a hybrid vs. heirloom sort of thing. The points that struck me were not the ones about hybrids. Hybrids are talked about, but for the most part they are discussing new varieties of open pollinated plants that have developed resistance through selective breeding. (That's the way I read it, anyway?) They are essentially IMPROVED Heirlooms.

Even Heirlooms were at some point hybrid, but now breed true because they have been reproduced over and over. I liked the line about how the 1902 cabbage was good then...but the creators of that cabbage didn't stop there. They kept working to make it better. So why should we venerate the 1902 version when there are new (open pollinated) descendants of the same thing that are better?

Preservation is a valuable thing, but I'm starting to think (and again, comparing to heritage chickens,) for the most part very few people are actually cut out for preservation. The rest of us should be striving for improvement. Always move forward! And when I say that, I don't just mean take a good Heritage RIR and turn it into a Production Red. I mean keep striving for that ultimate, beautiful dual purpose chicken that lays as well as a production red and dresses out as fat as a Cornish Cross but breeds true and looks good doing it.

Then there's this passage:

One of the first print references to heirlooms appeared in a 1949 article in The Times, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. That dictionary’s definition of “heirloom” matches the one used by Seed Savers Exchange: open-pollinated varieties that are more than 50 years old and have been handed down through generations.

But that classification describes only a portion of the 13,500 varieties in the group’s annual yearbook. And so Mr. Torgrimson, 60, embraces a wider and more useful classification that includes four categories.

First, there are the family legacies, like Bakery’s squash. Emma Adkins, of Van Lear, Ky., took this striped acorn cultivar from her mother’s garden and donated it to Seed Savers in 1994.

Perhaps the greatest number of heirlooms comes from the second group: old market varieties. A classic example is the Danvers carrot. The Fedco Seeds catalog traces this vegetable back to Massachusetts farmers in 1871.

Third is a “modern heirloom” like the sugar snap pea. The vegetable breeder Calvin Lamborn developed this open-pollinated favorite for the Gallatin Valley Seed Company in the 1970s.

The origins of the sugar snap, a rogue, thick-walled pea, lie in Mr. Torgrimson’s fourth category, “mystery heirlooms.” These are serendipitous discoveries and field crosses that farmers and gardeners decide to preserve and plant again.

I like these classifications and I can see how they could easily be tweaked to suit heritage poultry.

Finally, a parting thought....will the production red and production barred rock be the "heritage" breeds of future generations because they are what are most common now? Are these our "New Heirlooms"? They do, after all, breed true...​

 

[stoneunhenged]

A brilliant post. An excellent article. Much to ponder.

 

[gallorojo]

I can't predict the future, who knows, maybe people will think of the production red as a "Heritage" breed in 50 years, but, really, I doubt it.

My thoughts on "preservation"-the way many people on here, and elsewhere, speak of preservation, is absurd. The idea seems to be that somehow, magically, "old heritage breeder man" magically created xyz breed, and , it has been kept "pure" and just like the original for 150 years. That idea of preservation is ridiculous to me, that you can somehow keep something exactly the same. I have said this before, and, I will say it again. It is impossible to "maintain" a living strain of something. Your strain will either get better, it will get worse, or it will just change somehow. It cannot be kept the same, exactly. It can be kept SIMILAR enough to be recognizable, and used in the same ways-it can still do the same things. But it is NOT the same. No one should be striving for preservation, we all need to be striving for IMPROVEMENT. Nothing is perfect, all things could use some improvements. It says at the beginning of the SOP ( regarding the APA) "- it's principal object has been to improve the domestic fowl-" Note, it does not say the object is to preserve our fowl, the object is to improve them. Within the parameters of the Standard, of course.

As for the cabbage example, it's a good one. Cabbage varieties have been made continuously better over hundreds of years, even the open pollinated ones. However, our poultry ought to also have been made better, and, for the most part, it COULD have been. More on that in a minute.

Since I do work as a grower, let me explain how plant varieties work. New plant varieties drive the whole business, it is EVERYTHING, even for the heirloom guys. Novelty sells. Every plant supplier adds and deletes many varieties each year, even the heirloom guys. I go to plant trials every year-many of them. I speak with breeders, heck, I am lucky enough to know some prominent breeders. At this stage in the game , with an established plant, like marigolds, or tomatoes, new varieties are something of a joke to us on the inside. A new plant may be released that germinates 2 days faster, and is 2 inches shorter, and flowers 2 days earlier. This new plant will be given a name, and highly promoted by the parent company. This plant is however, visually identical to it's predecessor. Nobody can tell the difference, not even the breeders. It still does the same thing in the garden. It still tastes the same. The only reason it was introduced is the monetary benefit to the breeding company. NOVELTY sells in the plant world, period. Every breeding company has their own versions of essentially the same things, and they release new versions that are minimally unique, every year. All just to drive novelty. Seedsmen have a huge financial motive to convince you that the new tomato is way better, when it's really only a tiny, marginal bit better-but-it sure costs more!! On the other end of the spectrum from marigolds and tomatoes are the new genera, which are very exciting, but still need LOTS of work. Examples would be Echinacea or Coreopsis. These plants are THE HOT NEW things, and many breeders are madly competing to breed " better" ( read unusual) ones. The push is so strong to get things to market before your competitor, that testing, trialing, etc, go out the window. Crappy plants get released that look new and exciting, but don't perform.

Sounds like "project color" chickens to me.....

The poultry world is already like the plant world in regards to exotic new varieties and colors. They are sold for large prices and who knows if they really perform? Who cares? They sure look pretty!
As far as comparisons to older breeds, that is tougher. Imagine if every hatchery released a new name "red layer hen" EVERY year, and said it was a new breed, and was way better, than last year's model. It lays 2 more eggs a year, and reaches point of lay 2 days earlier than last year's model. Well, for one thing, chickens live more than 4 months, but, that aside, that would be ridiculous. However, that is how the plant breeders operate with old, established things. Let's go back to the cabbage again. What it ultimately comes down to, is how much can you really improve a cabbage before you hit a wall, a law of diminishing returns sort of thing. You can only make the poor plant do so much, before you start to have problems arise. This is where we are with old established crops. This is why the seed companies have got to convince us all any way they can to buy this years new seed, that may be "better" than last years, or even 10 years ago, but, really, by how much? Is the old variety different enough to warrant a new name? In my opinion, NO!! It's merely the same thing you have been growing all your life with slight improvements. It is not really a new variety at all. What I am getting at here, is the open pollinated cabbage of 1911 and the cabbage of 2011 are in many cases better thought of as one continuously improved variety, which has been given different names strictly for marketing purposes. Is 1902 cabbage worse than 2002 cabbage? Well, sure, but, really, not by much.

What I have taken so long to say is, the plant world creates new varieties where we in the animal world would just consider it a natural process of gradual improvement of the same breed. So, you cant't really compare cabbages to chickens.

When we all select and breed our poultry, we all ought to be aiming for some kind of improvement. At some point, you will reach certain physical or genetic limits, and progress will slow. But, you can always IMPROVE THEM. That in my opinion is the whole point of Standard Bred Poultry. Perhaps all the poultry breeds have not been improved over the last 100 years. They could have been, they ought to have been, and, there is still time left to improve what's there. We can't venerate the 1902 RIR because it no longer exists. Some still have something now that matches the Standard, that may or may not be any better than the 1902 version, but, it still has the same blood. Before we make any more new breeds, can we first try to improve what we have? You can only make a hen lay so many eggs, or, a cabbage get so big, before they both start to die on us.

Well, this went on forever. That's my take on it all, since I am a plant world insider. I hope somebody learns something!!

 

[gallorojo]

Check this out!! A great blog post about the same article!!

http://scienceblogs.com/casaubonsbo...eirlooms_new_york.php?utm_source=editorspicks

 

[HaikuHeritageFarm]

Quote:
You are awesome! This is exactly the kind of insightful discourse I look for so often and so rarely find!

I really enjoyed your insight into the plant world. I find it fascinating. The summary quoted above, however, leads me to another question.

Why shouldn't we be slapping new names on varieties every once in a while?! It seems to me that the original "Heritage" Rhode Island Red is different enough from what the hatcheries now carry that they deserve their own name. I believe a few have actually moved to call them Production Reds, but for the most part they are still "Rhode Island Reds" causing much confusion across the board.

I think perhaps the poultry world could benefit from sticking new names on a variety after it becomes different enough. It would save us all a lot of confusion. Something else it would do is offer those production birds a legitimate place. They could actually be standardized Production Reds as opposed to being non-standard Rhode Island Reds. If people looked at these birds as an actual separate breed worthy enough of their own name, they might merit a following that would develop and refine the breed as it never had been before. Same with the Easter Egger debate.

Thank you again for your thoughts, and that link to the blog post!