Pure Poultry Premise #1: Purebred Birds Are More Sustainable
IN THE PROCESS OF RESEARCHING AND WRITING THIS BOOK, I have realized that it is a genuine reflection of our values and the kind of lifestyle we choose and strive to achieve. In fact, unlike most currently available books about poultry, it is less a “how-to” than a “why-to” kind of book. Throughout, I have endeavored to share the choices we have made — and the reasons for them — in our progress toward a more sustainable way of life.
What does “sustainable” mean? I recently reread Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals (see Appendix B), and I agree with his view that the term has in recent years been overused to the point where, for many people, it has little meaning. He also suggests that anything unsustainable “sooner or later must collapse.” For us, so far, “sustainable” has the most relevance in regard to our animals.
To summarize, then, we have been growing heritage-breed chickens, turkeys and ducks. Over the past few years, we have raised a couple of pigs for about half the year. The chickens and ducks are mainly kept for eggs; we keep a small breeding flock of turkeys and raise up to two dozen every year to slaughter. The pigs, while grown for meat, also provide a valuable service by plowing up previously unused fields and eating the roots, allowing us to reseed with grasses and clovers to create better pasture. Choosing the breeds we raise involved much research and a conscious decision to keep only purebred animals, also known as “heritage” breeds. From all we’ve read and heard, as well as learned from our own experience, it is clear to us that purebred livestock is the best choice when the aim is greater sustainability.
For example, as mentioned in an earlier chapter, the Broad Breasted turkey (a commercial hybrid) cannot mate naturally; it must be artificially inseminated. Cornish Cross chickens, the ubiquitous grocery-store birds, have been bred to reach an impressive broiler size in seven weeks or less. Obviously, these chickens are being slaughtered long before the normal breeding age of eighteen to twenty weeks (depending on variety). However, their warp-speed growth comes at a high cost: leg problems and sudden death from cardiac arrest are not uncommon.
I have no quibble with those who are trying to make money in the poultry business and have found that they must raise these fast-growing hybrids in order to stay afloat financially. After all, no business is ultimately sustainable if it loses money. Also, we don’t raise chickens specifically for meat, although we do occasionally slaughter a few roosters when we have more than we need for breeding. So perhaps my view doesn’t seem to carry much weight. What I’ve said in the previous paragraph, however, are known facts, not just my opinion. That said, I hope you don’t hear any judgment there; I assure you I feel none.
Aside from reproductive issues, another reason we prefer purebreds is the variety of instinctive behaviors that contribute to the long-term health of the farm. For example, one of my criteria for choosing a chicken or turkey breed is foraging ability. All our birds free-range during the day, and we expect them to do some of the work of feeding themselves. (Statistics claim that foraging can account for up to 30 percent of a chicken’s daily feed requirement, but I haven’t seen any data as to which breeds were sampled or what kind of environment they had to forage in.) Our observation has been that the birds spend a few minutes eating grain first thing in the morning, then head off to happily scratch and peck until it’s time for a late snack before heading in for the night.
Our Midget White turkeys also are excellent foragers. The first year we had them, they did a great job of cleaning up the windfall apples near the house, which kept the deer from coming into the yard. The ducks love to dabble in the freshly plowed fields after we move the pigs to another paddock; they break up the manure piles and eat the larvae of intestinal worms, thereby disrupting the cycle of parasites and disease. The heritage pigs have thankfully retained their instinctive rooting behavior; they find a good portion of their own food and efficiently rid the land of the roots of weeds and other unwanted plants. The chickens and turkeys then follow the ducks, picking out leftover weed seeds and worms. This progression, by the way, also closely imitates nature; for example, woodland birds break up bear manure, in the process spreading around seeds from the berries the bears eat in large quantities in the summer.
We continue learning about how to fully utilize purebred livestock on our farm. In 2008, when we participated in that sustainable agriculture class, one of the ideas that impressed us was that the key to success on small farms is diversity. We have already had a taste of the value of diversifying, step by slow step. In the next few chapters, I will further detail how heritage poultry contributes to sustainable agriculture and how we are working toward our goals.