From Left to right: An Abacot ranger drake, two Shetland drakes, a blue and white Magpie drake and West of England geese.
Benjamin Crosby looks at why it might be wise to sacrifice a little production for the relative ease of keeping hardy native breeds which often thrive on foraging in the British environment.
Native breeds are those created solely in Great Britain. There is a great, often overlooked, selection to choose from, and a breed for just about every need. Most have limited value and many are extremely rare. There are twenty-five domestic fowl breeds to choose from. There are also ten domestic breeds of duck and three goose breeds, fourteen rabbit breeds, ten pig breeds and six goat breeds native to Great Britain. We also have some sixty sheep breeds ‒ more than any other country. This enormous diversity has come about due to the unique needs of both domestic and commercial farmers. They have been created for a wide range of environments, management methods and purposes across Great Britain. This diversity of breeds ensures that wherever you live there is most likely a breed local to you and historically important in your area or to your family, or suited to your environment or chosen management method. One of the first sources of information should be the Rare Breeds Survival Trust. There are RBST sponsored sales and shows held throughout the UK during the year and DEFRA publish a native breeds at risk report which you should consult.
British Lop sow and litter.
Breed selection is often underestimated by both newcomers and experienced keepers. Many believe that a chicken is a chicken – they are all alike and can all flourish in any pen that is built for them. Indeed, livestock are adaptable, but that usually comes at a cost. The truth is there are vast differences in habit, hardiness, productivity, appetite and pest or disease resistance, temperament and so on. Choosing a breed specifically suited to your environment and care regime is therefore important. However, likewise, there can be differences within a breed, often dependent on the past breeding and selection of a particular strain. Often, some of the rarest breeds will suffer most from accidental or deliberate outcrossing and sometimes excessive inbreeding. Again, much depends on the strain and source. That said, there are still quite notable differences between breeds, and some characteristics appear to stay true to a breed or class.
Carefully selecting a breed for your own circumstances will have a dramatic effect on the quality of produce, your own well-being, animal welfare and the degree of care that is required.
Unless you are prepared to devote a great deal of time to keeping livestock solely for the sake of preservation, exhibiting or in an attempt to make them commercially viable, it is wise to keep only what you require for your own purposes. Poultry, rabbits and pigs are extremely prolific, so it is all too easy to become overrun with excess stock or excess produce.
Rabbits are often overlooked as a source of food.
The great number of free-range egg stalls that crop up at poultry keepers’ front gates is testament to how easy it is for your hens to produce an excess number of eggs. This ultimately commits you to the hassle of selling the excess rather than wasting them.
Despite the admirable efforts of some keepers, at best the money raised from domestic sales can do no more than cover feed costs and your time. So why keep more chickens or ducks than you need for your own purposes? There are many benefits to keeping a smaller number of animals ‒ they will have more room to roam and will suffer less from parasites, particularly if reared extensively. A low stocking density will allow free-ranging stock to forage without competition for much of their diet, resulting in naturally reared healthy livestock. Carefully deciding how much produce you really need should play a big part in your choice of breed. Suddenly you may realise that you do not need a highly productive hybrid or breed, so why not choose one of the lesser productive traditional breeds that have a hardy and independent nature and a smaller appetite? If you are hoping to find an exceptionally productive breed with extreme hardiness and longevity, an independent and docile nature with good mothering instincts, a small appetite and large egg size, you will never find it – in nature there is always a cost.
The curious Cuckoo Scots Dumpy. Scots Dumpies are docile with characteristic short legs and are reliable layers of medium sized tinted eggs.
A compromise must inevitably be made, and it is in the domestic environment where characteristics other than productivity are highly valued. This is where native rare breeds become valuable for the small-scale domestic keeper. Not only do many of them have more suitable low-maintenance attributes, they also often have unique and interesting traits that make them an attractive addition to the garden or valuable for niche market products. A good example of the usefulness of native rare breeds can be seen in the form of the auto-sexing chicken breeds. The Brussbar, Rhodebar, Legbar and Welbar are among the rarest of all native livestock breeds, yet their ability to be sexed at a day old by the colour of the chicks makes them extremely useful to domestic keepers who could greatly benefit from identifying, culling or selling excess cockerels while they are still young. This is particularly useful if you have limited room to grow them all on.
They are also based on popular and prolific traditional breeds such as the Rhode Island Red, in the case of the Rhodebar, which ensures they are capable of being a highly productive addition to the garden poultry coop, too. Coupled with their relatively docile, non-flighty habit they make an excellent choice for keeping in small numbers in small areas. Yet strangely they are nearly extinct. The Gold Legbar and Brussbar are the very rarest of our native poultry breeds. Their demise is most likely the result of continued limited publicity since their creation, their uninspiring names and the general fashion of keepers to struggle along keeping perhaps less hardy, lice prone and profusely feathered fancy breeds that are often non-native.
Native Breeds Need You!
Native breeds depend on human care – they are, after all, domesticated animals. However, the degree of dependence varies greatly and this plays an important part in selecting a breed.
The surprisingly rare Abacot is used mainly for egg production.
Poultry breeds that have been specifically developed for exhibition require greater care than the independent farmyard breeds of northern England such as the Redcap, Old English Pheasant Fowl and Old English Game. Orpingtons, for example, are docile and slow natured, making them easy prey. They are also prone to lice and scaly leg mite. The Old English Pheasant Fowl, on the other hand, is one of a few breeds that rarely if ever suffer from leg mites, and their tighter, less profuse feathering and active habit is much less enticing to lice. Their alert and flighty nature when roaming free also prevents their predation.
A quartet of Buff Orpington ducks ‒ a hardy and energetic dual purpose breed.
Old English Pheasant Fowl, however, are not popular like the Orpington, which is large, fluffy and easily handled – traits that persistently take priority with many keepers. Orpingtons also have excellent brooding instincts. In the case of both the Redcap and the Old English Pheasant Fowl the lack of (but not total absence of) brooding instinct may indeed be a result of fox predation on brooding hens in centuries past, when they received minimal care while roaming farms and homesteads. Orpingtons have been protected if you like by the invention and availability of chicken mesh. The Orpington has always received a greater deal of care and has been carefully selected since its earliest days for exhibiting.
Similar comparisons can be made between sheep breeds. Longwool and Downland breeds require shearing and dagging to prevent maggots and to remove the fleece before the heat of summer, and they also require greater hoof care. They are highly prolific mothers, meaty and produce high quality and abundant wool. Primitive sheep breeds, however, still retain some degree of natural moulting, are more resistant to parasites and extreme weather, and can survive on a minimal diet, even with some degree of starvation. The cost is that they are far less productive both in meat and wool, and also in the number of lambs born. Primitive breeds are also more likely to escape and can be difficult to catch, although they are usually easy to handle once caught.
Despite their lower productivity, their hardy and independent nature still has value for the home farmer who requires only enough lamb or craft wool for their own purposes at minimal care and cost. Whether primitive sheep and goats can be left to roam semi-feral without daily attention is debatable. Certainly though, due to their naturally independent nature it is only right for nature to have a greater say, so to speak, in their selection. It is important to utilise breeds suitable to your environment and desired level of care. The level of care given to a breed should be the same as the type of care that the breed has evolved with or been selected for. For example, compassion at lambing time and the manual feeding of a man-made diet with confined rearing on lush lowland pasture with winter housing may prove to be detrimental to the continued hardiness of primitive breeds, which are accustomed to an independent lifestyle on rough grazing on exposed sites. Likewise, grazing Downland sheep on poor, windswept pasture on high ground would be detrimental to their well-being. Old English Game chickens are unsuitable for keeping in small pens that children have access to due to their flighty and aggressive nature, and Modern Game, a popular, tall and fancy exhibition breed of poultry, would fare poorly on an exposed open field.
A Dark Indian Game hen sitting tightly on eggs. I dare you to put your hand in!
In summary, to fulfil your needs most efficiently and for both your well-being and the welfare of your chosen breed(s) it is important to carefully research and select them, and fortunately there are indeed plenty to choose from. Remember, though, to take responsibility for their needs – you may well desire a highly productive breed, but the likelihood is their care requirements will be subtly more demanding.
The uses of native breeds
Top end produce
Once you try your own sausages, bacon and eggs from your own home-reared pigs and poultry you will not want to go back to mass-produced produce. The intensity of flavour is greater and richer, the meat is often darker, and although sometimes tougher it is more natural and healthy for being so. If you raise your own livestock you know exactly what has gone into them, and their produce is the freshest you can get.
It seems a shame that people have become so accustomed to the soft, tasteless produce of commercial farming which may please the housewife in being value for money in the sense that you get more for your money, but it is unnatural in that it has been highly processed, wrapped in plastic and derived from animals often confined to small areas and fed a man-made, unnatural grain-based diet. All animals would benefit from foraging for at least part of their diet, and in doing so their produce will be more natural for it. It is in a domestic environment that you can ensure that livestock are raised to the standards you require for the food that you eat.
The Oxford Sandy and Black is an attractive pig, but if you are looking for a docile-natured pig with consistent quality there are more suitable breeds.
Land Management
Native breeds of sheep, goat, cattle and pony can be used in conservation grazing projects. The aim of conservation grazing is to prevent or restrict the natural regeneration of woodland and therefore maximise the diversity of plant, insect and animal life within meadows and marshes to help encourage the survival of endangered wildlife species.
Shetland sheep are used to slow the regeneration of tree and shrub species to encourage greater diversity in the sward.
Primitive breeds are often utilised because of their hardy and independent habit and their ability to graze unselectively on sometimes poor quality, limited or coarse grazing with minimal care requirements. Sheep, and goats such as the Bagot, are especially useful for making productive use of hard-to-access areas that are too difficult to utilise for other agricultural purposes. Pigs such as the energetic and alert Tamworth are valuable for the clearance of scrub and, if carefully managed, can be used to cultivate soil and remove weeds from among established tree saplings, which they generally leave undamaged initially, preferring to root in loose soil and turf – until of course that has all gone! They can also be put to use extensively within oak woodland in the autumn to consume fallen acorns. This is particularly useful in mast years when there are bumper crops. Acorns count as one of their ‘5 a day’!
Timid and independent, Bagot goats are among the hardiest of native breeds.
Crafts
One of the most notable products of our native breeds is wool. Wool is a natural and sustainable fibre. The fineness, handle and staple length vary greatly, meaning their wool is suitable for a wide range of uses. Hill and mountain breeds often have very hard-wearing wool brought about by the harsh exposed environments they live in. Such wool is ideal for carpet production. Downland breeds generally have the finest and highest quality wools, befitting the greater care and kinder environment they are used to. Such wool may be used for hand-knitting or the weaving of cloth. Other uses of wool include the making of bed sheets and rugs. Wool is also flame retardant and naturally insulating yet breathable, making it a viable option for home insulation, soundproofing and clothing.
Further Info
Visit www.britannicrarebreeds.co.uk to find out more about native breeds and their uses, and to find breeders, classified ads, local producers and general useful advice.
Traditional British Poultry Breeds by Benjamin Crosby is published by The Crowood Press and is an in-depth guide to every native poultry breed, and includes 249 colour photos. Each breed is accurately described together with information on their variations, uses and the attributes that make them suitable for today’s hobbyist.
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