[ladycat]

This is sad. We are losing our biodiversity. This is an article in yesterday's Science Daily:

ScienceDaily: Rare Breeds Of Farm Animals Face Extinction

I keep rare heritage breeds of chickens to help preserve them. I don't like the modern hybrids that have been developed strictly for high production for factory farms.

[designspl]

That is sad. My parents have several rare chickens as well and they breed them with each other as well to help preserve them. They like keeping the other chickens for the mass amounts of eggs they get. Me personally I prefer store bought.

[ladycat]

Originally Posted by designspl

That is sad. My parents have several rare chickens as well and they breed them with each other as well to help preserve them.

That's cool. Do you know what breeds they have?

I have several breeds, but the ones I'm most proud of are the old timey Rhode Island Reds. The kind your great grandparents had.

The so-called RIR's sold by the hatcheries for the last 60 years or so have been crossed with leghorns and turned into egg laying machines with no personality. They don't have the beauty and size of the real thing, and have had their broodiness bred right out of them.

The old fashioned ones I have are very scarce. There are only a handful of breeders (me being one of them).

[ladycat]

I knew I had some pics of my RIR's somewhere. I set up a cage out in the sun one day, and put a hen and a rooster in there so I could take some pictures.

THis one shows the long back. The modern ones have a short back and upright stance.

[ladycat]

A couple of front views of a rooster:





Another thing I like about these is that they are so wonderfully tame and friendly. The roosters are not mean, and they like to follow me around and fly up onto my shoulder.

[ladycat]

A hen:



The hens don't lay as early and often as the commercial strains of chickens. But they lay for many years (commercial hens lay 2 or 3 years and then quit), and they can live into their teens. The hens will hatch their own eggs.