This could easily lead to an argument. Why? Heritage means different things to different people. And some can be very passionate about that. I’ll give my opinion anyway.
To some people, the word heritage brings up visions of the breeds small farmers or housewives in town would have running around their farm or backyard. Rhode Island Reds, Barred Rocks, White Rocks, and such would fall into this category.
Some people may feel that only large fowl fall into the category but others include all breeds that were recognized at some arbitrarily chosen date.
Others might feel the chickens have to meet the Standard of Perfection (SOP). Each country has its own version of the SOP. For example, in France a Marans has to have feathers on its legs, not so here in the US. I have a fairly unpopular opinion on SOP’s by the way. I feel that they were written to define a breed so people could compete in chicken shows. Some features in the SOP have a direct link to the function of the breed, skin color and conformation for meat birds, for example. But things like comb and eye color are more related to what makes them pretty with that confirmation than an actual function. Still, for some peopl0e, if they met the visual requirements of the SOP, they can be considered heritage.
Others feel that they need to not only meet the requirements of the SOP that a judge would see; they also need the production qualities and behaviors of the original breed. A judge won’t see the egg a chicken lays, especially a rooster, though a breed should lay a certain color and size egg. You’ll see a lot of comments on here about how mean and aggressive a Rhode Island Red rooster is. That behavior can be bred into or out of a flock. The original RIR’s were a backyard flock with kids running around and often taking care of the chickens. An aggressive RIR rooster would wind up in a stew pot. So heritage RIR roosters should not be aggressive. A certified APA judge on this forum has commented that the original heritage birds had to have a certain feed to egg or meat conversion ratio. Super huge birds use a lot of what they eat to maintain that big body. He feels that judges are rewarding people at shows for huge birds when the original heritage birds of that breed were not that big. So, yeah, there can be some disagreement among the pros. These are often quite passionate about their birds too.
Occasionally you will see comments about heritage breeds being endangered. Some of these are surprising because lot of us have this breed. When you see this comment, they are talking about that last kind, where behavior and production qualities count. There may be only two or three flocks in the entire country that meet that definition in spite of a lot of flocks meeting the SOP show bird requirements.
