Heritage vs. Hybrid

[cubalaya]

heritage breed is basically a breed that has been bred so long as to be pure. it is usually a strain of an established breed like rhode island red for instance. the mohawk strain would be considered heritage but a hatchery bred rhode island red would not be heritage or pure but a look alike. a hybrid would be a cross between two established breeds for example a pure asil crossed with a pure brazilian would be a hybrid. while an easter egger crossed with a hatchery breed whatever would be a mutt. hybrid vigor can help an over inbred strain by making the cross and then breeding the next generation back to the original breed F1. KEEP IN MIND once something is added, it can never be 100% pure again although by F5 you are at 31/32 pure and should look like the original strain but with the health and vigor of the outcross. this is basic breeding of fowl. family breeding, inbreeding, line breeding, outcross, or crossbreeding. these are tools the breeder has to improve the flock for years to come. just saying you are going to create a new breed by crossing this or that really sounds so ignorant and is pretty much a waste of time but each to their own

 

[King of the Farm]

but a hatchery bred rhode island red would not be heritage or pure but a look alike.

So not all Rhode Island Reds bought from a hatchery are heritage?

 

[BGMatt]

So not all Rhode Island Reds bought from a hatchery are heritage?

Part of the definition of heritage (according to the Livestock Conservancy which is likely the most "official" definition) is conforming to the Standard of the breed. What a hatchery calls a Rhode Island Red is very unlikely to conform very closely to the written standard of the Rhode Island Red.

 

[cubalaya]

So not all Rhode Island Reds bought from a hatchery are heritage?

definitely not. i have one from ideal that i am sure has leghorn mixed in

 

[Smokerbill]

So not all Rhode Island Reds bought from a hatchery are heritage?

I bought eight Barred Rock chicks this spring, and right from the start I noticed quite a bit of variation in their coloration. They're definitely not heritage quality birds. Production grade, I think they're called.

 

[Cubaniton]

I'm sure someone else can give a more detailed reply, but basically heritage breeds are those that have been around for many, in some cases hundreds of years. They have stayed most the same though all that time, and they breed true. So if you have a male and a female from the same breed, their offspring will have all the same traits as them.
Examples are Rhode island reds, Sussex, Orpington, Wyandotte, and many others.

A hybrid is just that, a mix of other breeds. Generally bred to either lay as many eggs over a short time span as possible, or to grow to a size ready to eat in less then 10 weeks.
Because they are bred to be so productive early on, they don't tend to live very long. 6 months at most for a meat bird, a couple of years for an egg layer.

Mostly, but I'm not sure if there may be some 'new' breeds, that might not go into either category. Not sure on that one though.

You are basically correct is most of it except in:

they don't tend to live very long. 6 months at most for a meat bird, a couple of years for an egg layer

The meat birds can live long healthy lives, if the person who feeds it does it in a controlled fashion. These meat birds have no self control, and will eat until they are ready to burst, that is why there is the misconception that they only live 6 months or so, but the reality is that if the feed is restricted and they are not allowed to eat more than is really needed for their sustenance, then they will live long healthy lives like other chickens, but the struggle is in keeping them trimmed and healthy by reducing their feed intake.
High production egg layers will live long healthy lives, if allowed to do so after they are done producing eggs, because eventually they will stop giving eggs, and farms have to get rid of them, and thus the myth was created that they don't live much longer than that, when in reality they are butchered simply because they are no longer as productive as in the first two years or so.

 

[Cubaniton]

A hybrid bird is an f1. That is: its parents were from two different standardised breeds. It does not matter the intention of the breeding, the offspring from a crossing is an f1,l from different parent stock, and therefore by definition a hybrid. Wether or not it is a useful hybrid or not is a different matter. Red sexlinks and cornish cross are popular hybrids. If you cross two hybrids you get the f2 (or s2) generation. Most of this generation will not be the same as their parents. They will revert to their grandparents traits. This is what is meant by “not breeding true”. However a small portion will have (some of) the desired traits. If you continued to select for those traits over the next few generations it is possible to stabilise the genetics.


Heritage birds are breeds whose genetics have been stabilised through breeding and selection a long time ago. They are standard recognised breeds. An example is Sussex or Australorp. If you breed a Sussex hen with a Sussex rooster, the offspring will be Sussex chicks.

There are stabilised breeds that are too new to count as heritage.

Cornish Cross chickens are a breed on their own, the myth (lies) of it being a hybrid was spread and continues to be pushed by large chicken farms to avoid competition and prevent a large section of individual chicken breeders from raising and hatching their own meat birds (Cornish Cross).

 

[rockethoe]

Cornish Cross chickens are a breed on their own, the myth (lies) of it being a hybrid was spread and continues to be pushed by large chicken farms to avoid competition and prevent a large section of individual chicken breeders from raising and hatching their own meat birds (Cornish Cross).

I'd easy believe it. this is the case with many things - I grow veg commercially, and save some of our own seeds. many of the seeds we have saved come from "f1" proprietary varieties, and they always breed true.

 

[NatJ]

Cornish Cross chickens are a breed on their own, the myth (lies) of it being a hybrid was spread and continues to be pushed by large chicken farms to avoid competition and prevent a large section of individual chicken breeders from raising and hatching their own meat birds (Cornish Cross).

No myth involved.

The current Cornish Cross chickens ARE a hybrid.
If you breed them, you do get chicks that grow faster than most other chickens, but they do not all have quite the same traits and growth patterns as the Cornish Cross bought from the hatchery.

I have seen several threads from people who bred Cornish Cross chickens, and the offspring were variable for size and growth traits. I have also seen some of the information that the big companies provide to hatcheries raising the Cornish Cross, that talks about how the fathers vs. mothers come from different breeding programs (but if you think the breeders & hatcheries are lying, you wouldn't believe that.)

The meat birds can live long healthy lives, if the person who feeds it does it in a controlled fashion. These meat birds have no self control, and will eat until they are ready to burst, that is why there is the misconception that they only live 6 months or so, but the reality is that if the feed is restricted and they are not allowed to eat more than is really needed for their sustenance, then they will live long healthy lives like other chickens, but the struggle is in keeping them trimmed and healthy by reducing their feed intake.

The reality is that if you raise them like any other normal chicken, they do NOT live long healthy lives.

The reality is that they NEED special care in a way that most other chicken breeds do not, if they are going to live past the usual butchering age.

So saying they "cannot" live very long is true for the majority of situations in which people keep chickens.

High production egg layers will live long healthy lives, if allowed to do so after they are done producing eggs, because eventually they will stop giving eggs, and farms have to get rid of them, and thus the myth was created that they don't live much longer than that, when in reality they are butchered simply because they are no longer as productive as in the first two years or so.

The ones that die of reproductive disorders are not living a long healthy life. Not all of them do this, but it does seem that high-production egg layers have deadly reproductive issues at a much higher rate when they are about 2-3 years old, compared with many other kinds of chickens. I have not been able to find numbers on what percent usually have trouble by what age.

So they "usually" die at a certain age because they are killed by people, but how long they CAN live is sometimes limited by health issues.

(Yes, I know there are people on this forum with elderly high-production hens in good health. I am not trying to claim that all of them would die young.)

 

[NatJ]

I'd easy believe it. this is the case with many things - I grow veg commercially, and save some of our own seeds. many of the seeds we have saved come from "f1" proprietary varieties, and they always breed true.

With plants, you are right about some of them being true-breeding even when labeled as hybrids.

But with chickens, the layer hybrids and the meat hybrids from the big hatcheries really ARE hybrids. The parents all have certain traits, but they are mis-matched in some other traits. So for example, if both parents are white, all the chicks are white (that trait breeds true), but in meat birds the mothers are selected to lay more eggs while not growing as fast (more eggs = able to produce more chicks), while the fathers are selected for the fastest possible growth. The chicks are usually very uniform, growing at the same speed as each other. Breeding the chicks to produce another generation will generally give variable sizes (from "big" to "even bigger") and different growth rates (from "fast" to "even faster.")

It is a bit like if you saved seeds from a big pumpkin, and those seeds grew pumpkins that ranged from medium size up to enormous. You won't get zucchinis, and you won't get tiny pumpkins, and you absolutely will not get tomatoes or corn, but the pumpkins are not all consistent in size. Likewise, Cornish Cross meat chickens will produce white chicks that grow fast, but some will grow faster and bigger than others.

Part of the reason the chickens really are hybrids while plants like tomatoes are usually not: a tomato plant can pollinate itself, and manually crossing tomatoes is a labor-intensive nuisance. With chickens, it is pretty easy to be sure you have males of one kind and females of another kind, and after that they take care of the crossing. It is just as easy to produce hybrid chickens as to produce purebred chickens.