Heritage Poultry

As a teenager I raised some bronze turkeys. I forget the exact breed, maybe they were just called “bronze”. Anyway, they were a little smaller than the commercial white strains. That was good thing, because by that time it was just my mom, dad and me at home. The smaller birds were good for a couple of meals for the three of us.

When I was a little older and teaching high school agriculture I had a kid order 25 white poults for the county fair. After he had paid for them his family up and moved to another state. I couldn’t find anyone else to take the poults so my wife and I raised them.

At first we were slaughtering one or two at a time as they started growing. That made for some smaller birds, which was fine. By the time we lost one or two and slaughtered some more we had about 14, maybe 15 that reached full maturity. I tried to slaughter all of them by myself and all at the same time. That was the longest day of my life. We were at an FFA function at the high school that I had attended and it had a full processing room, so I had taken the birds over there to process. Luckily, there were about 3 or 4 farm girls with us that day and after they finished their activites they stopped by, rolled up their sleeves and went to work helping me. Wonder why those particular kids were among my most favorite students?

Anyway, we ended up with way more turkey than we could ever use. We gave one to just about every neighbor or friend that would take one and still had at least 6 or so in the freezer. You know there is only so many ways you can prepare turkey. I think it took 3 or 4 years for either of us to want to eat turkey after that.

So my thinking is yes, go with the smaller heritage type breeds. I do have a friend that is still an ag teacher and last fall I noticed that he was raising some Bourbons. I never asked how they did on the table and never got my hands on them to see how finished they were, but they sure were pretty birds.

Joshua,

The Red Broiler is a nice alternative to the cornish cross, they do lay, not very well, but some and they produce a more modern meaty carcass than most heritage breed. The older hens make great meaty flavorful soup hens. They have a lot of New Hampshire genetics in them but are not a heritage breed if that is what you are really looking for.

I used to raise Dominiques, the oldest American breed that can be classified as heritage, heirloom or an antique breed by all accounts. Many lines have a good deal of Barred Plymouth Rock infused into them, but since rocks have been around since 1874, they are a heritage breed too. I really like the Dominique, they are thrifty birds that can survive on little grain (if pastured or free range), produce a good amount of eggs (if you can find them) and make great stew hens.

The thing to keep in mind about heritage poultry is that you have to recalibrate your standards of what a good meat carcass is. I don’t want to use the word never, but I can’t picture a heritage breed coming close to the carcass of a cornish cross as far as amount of meat. However I also can’t imagine a cornish cross ever having the firm texture and excellent flavor that a heritage bird has the potential to produce.

When the time is right I plan on establishing a Dominique flock for egg and breeding purposes. I will sell some hatching eggs and young stock and raise breeding culls for meat and eggs. I have an idea of a heritage hybrid that will be unique to our farm, an accidental crossing in my childhood flock inspired this. It will be tough keeping 2 lines to make a hybrid, but I see this flock as a hobby that pays for itself, I don’t plan on making a profit but I am open to the Dom’s making a little extra cash too.

I believe that when marketing hertiage breed poultry meat, we need to stress the quality of the meat and not the quantity. A heritage carcass is going to be what we may consider scrawny buy modern standards, but what someone in the 1930’s and 1940’s may consider prime. I plan on marketing mine as yesteryear chicken or the chicken that grandma would have served for Sunday dinner. Another problem is that the meat is perceived as tough. We have to remember that free running birds don’t produce mushy meat. Heritage birds need to be cooked carefully, they take less time to cook because they have less water content. I refer to these types of birds as having texture rather than calling them tough. If the bird is a stew bird it takes all day to cook it tender, but well worth it for some of the best soup or chicken and biscuits. Customer education is key when selling something that a grocery store would never carry anymore.

I wish you luck with your search for the right heritage breed(s).

Erika

We have toulouse geese here. Such easy keepers, they get big and fat on nothing but grass and weeds. My goose bred just fine and brought off seven goslings the first time. A little grain for the first few weeks of life for the goslings, and some to carry the breeding pair through the winter, otherwise they take charge of their own affairs and get fat on just pasture. I have never raised turkeys so I can’t compare, but I am so fond of raising geese that I have taken on the charge of convincing customers to try a goose for thanksgiving or christmas instead of a turkey.

Food for thought, perhaps. Good luck!

We’re raising free range Dark Cornish this year for meat birds. Our first batch will be processed at the end of this month. I’ll try to remember to report how they turn out.

I ate the 4 year old Red Broiler hen, I cooked her all day long in a crock pot and later added veggies and then added some dumplings. I brought her to farmer potluck and she got rave revues and no one would have thought the bird was an old hen. I will let you know how the 9 year old Rhode Island Red/ Brahma cross cooks up. I don’t know about cooking older water fowl, but with chicken, cook the bird all day long until the meat falls off the bones, and I know that you can even cook it further until the bones are soft enough to eat.
Good Luck and let us know how the old geese turnout.

The difficulty with hybrid vigor is that you have to either have a good reliable source of pure stock, or keep two separate lines yourself. The New Hampshire is a great bird on its own, I think if you crossed it with a Cornish the meat potential could be greater. A word of warning about the Cornish, they actually grow rather slowly, and are not the most vigorous breeders. Special strains are used for commercial breeding flocks and the modern white Cornish cross hybrid is really a 4 way hybrid, thus the extreme growth rates and high percentage of white meat. I think your cross idea is certainly worth a try, but be aware that any non commercial Cornish that you can get your hands on may not result in such extreme vigor.

Erika