Preserve an Endangered Species with Heritage Chickens

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Our Role

MOTHER's readers were among the farsighted few who popularized chemical-free (organic) gardening and resource conservation long before ecology became conventional wisdom and Environ-mentalism a political Cause, and so we have a natural—indeed, almost a mandatory—place in the movement to retain our native poultry varieties. For what its worth, since the mid eighties, we've been working to breed semiwild forage-feeding skill and the chick-raising instinct back into my Hampshire/Rhode Island Reds. Here's how you can join us if you like.

Cost

Chickens are gallinaceous birds—like pheasants and quail—and their young hatch out able to walk, feed, and drink for themselves. Hatcheries sell them when they're a day old in lots of 25. Expect to pay 25 ¢ to a dollar per conventional-breed chick—up to $5 for rare strains. A straight-run lot (half males, half females as-hatched) is usually cheapest and perfect for a home flock.

You'll be able to tell young males when the head-top combs begin to develop (faster, and pinker than the pullers') and they start adopting the upright posture and leaner bodies of males (vs. lower, plumper hens). Keep the 3 largest and most feisty young males for breeding. Isolate and fatten the rest for slaughter at 4 to 6 weeks of age. Of the dozen females, 10 or 11 will prove out, and give you 5 or 6 eggs a week apiece when they start laying pint-sized "pullet eggs" at 5 months and quickly begin laying full-size eggs for the neat 12 months or so. Then they spend 6 months molting and put their energy into growing feathers rather than eggs. They'll repeat the sequence for 1 to 10 years thereafter.

It is probably good economics to replace every hen after her best year. I keep any of the ladies who show high vigor, a moist and supple vent, bright eyes, and other signs of health. This is the only way to identify those with the genes to become good long-term layers, brooders, and foragers who will eat cheap and brood chicks so you don't have to buy replacements every year.

W ith luck and a good choice of breed (see sidebar: Selecting Your Breed), you can establish and raise a flock to laying age of 6 months for a couple hundred bucks: $25 for chicks, $50 for feed, $70 for recycled coopbuilding materials, and $50 For plastic or sheet-metal coop furniture: vacuum/dome waterer, hanging feeder, and feed and supplement bins. Buy your "furniture" new; used tin goods will be rusty and waterers especially short-lived, and may be contaminated with disease or parasites.

Then, if you can raise $2/dozen superfresh eggs for a half-buck a dozen in feed costs (and you can do much better letting birds forage in summer and feeding kitchen scraps and store producedepartment gleanings in winter), 12 good hens, each laying a half dozen eggs a week, will pay for themselves in less than 6 months. If you value your eggs at only a buck a dozen, you'll break even in a year.

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