Rare Breed Poultry

By Robbie Wilson

  Email;nz.robbie@gmail.com

If You Would like to keep some poultry, what about some rare breed chickens? They won't cost you any more to feed and you will be helping keeping these breeds going, some breeds have all ready disappeared.

Back in the 1940-1950s and even the 1960s most of the poultry that is rare today was quite common. In the 1960s, my parents owned a small poultry farm of about 2500 chickens, mostly white leghorns, which they kept in sheds that housed about a 100 birds. They were good layers.
At one time they also had Rhode Island Reds and black Orpingtons. The Orpingtons were very good for laying through the winter.

One reason for the downturn in rare breeds is hybrid poultry used by commercial farmers, which come into lay earlier. Once common poultry are now rare breeds and only kept going by a few dedicated breeders around NZ. Some breeds have already been lost and we are no longer allowed to import from anywhere else in the world.

The poultry breeds that I have are: Dorking, a very old breed with five toes, which can be traced back to Roman times; Orpingtons and Brown Leghorns, very good layers of big white eggs; Barnevelders, a Dutch breed that are also good layers of a large brown egg; and Faverolles, a French breed.

You may pay more for these breeds but it is worth it, and remember it doesn't cost any more to feed rare breed poultry and you are helping to preserve the breeds.
Some breeds are more active than others, including light breeds such as Leg horn, Hamburgs, Campines, Araucana (these lay a blue shelled egg) and Andalusians. They are still available, but in declining numbers.

Rare Breeds Site[[http://www.rarebreeds.co.nz/index.html