Saving Rare Breeds

Article Tools

Image Gallery

Print

E-mail

Comments

RSS

After buying his farm near Calamus in the fall of 1988, Drowns started keeping poultry again — and collecting rare breeds when he realized their numbers had dropped markedly since his Idaho hatchery days. "When I started looking, I couldn't find any of these turkeys," Drowns says. "I found dead people, but no turkeys. People would tell me, 'I wish you'd called last year, before Grandpa died.' It took me five or six years just to locate and establish these breeds." The experience, he says, made him obsessive. "I felt if I didn't try to save a bird, in 10 years it wouldn't be there."

Today, his turkey collection includes 15 varieties — from Black Spanish and Blue Slate to Jersey Buff, Lilac and White Holland; his Bronzes are the Wishard strain, known for hardiness and developed by Wish Poultry in Oregon.

In addition to the turkeys, Drowns says, "We have 235 breeds of chickens, ducks, geese and guineas and a few quail." His wife, Linda, adds, "And all he wanted was three breeds of ducks and a few chickens." It takes him, or his sons, 5 1/2 hours a day just to feed and water all the birds; Linda handles the catalog paperwork; during hatching season, from April through October, the family's workload escalates dramatically.

The rare breeds hatchery business has challenged them, Drowns says. "I don't like to look at us as a business. I wish there was somebody out there like Bill Gates (of Microsoft) to help with expenses." Overall, though, his concern is the preservation of the poultrys' genetics — precisely what made him obsessive about collecting his breeder birds in the first place. "What's in these chickens and turkeys that we'll need in 10 years?" he asks. "Diversity to me is the only way that the planet is going to survive."

Although he and turkey breeder Reese have met only once, they both work regularly with the Conservancy on turkey research projects and workshops, and both are among recipients of the organization's prestigious Bixby-Sponenberg Breed Conservation Award.

The 50-year-old Reese, a nurse anesthetist, and his elegant, curious, rainbowed Bronze turkeys, live on the 100-year-old family farmstead southwest of Lindsborg, Kansas. He's kept and shown his own purebred birds since 1958, when he was just 5 years old, following in the footsteps of his father, grandmother and great-grandmother before him. He's also benefited from other knowledgeable mentors along the way, including the late Norm Kardosh, whose line of Bronze turkeys Reese now maintains at Good Shepherd Turkey Ranch.

In Kansas, for years, Reese found only a small market for his birds, selling to other private growers and a few consumers at holiday time, but since the appearance of Burros' New York Times story, which reported on the birds' link with Slow Food USA, he's been delighted and challenged to keep up with a new and dizzying pace, and to keep his prices high enough to be fiscally sound. The new market, he says, is mostly individuals who are food lovers or food professionals nationwide who have tapped into his taste treat via Slow Food USA, although interest has begun to spread to other sales outlets, too.

RSS | Comments | E-mail | Print