Guide to Choosing a Heritage Meat Chicken Breed

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What is a heritage chicken?

First things first. Let’s talk a little about what a “heritage” breed is. You may have heard this term thrown around and maybe even listed as a marketing point on some grocery store meat packaging. So what IS a heritage breed anyways? I’ll give you the Livestock Conservancy‘s definition, and then I’ll tell you how I like to explain it.

Translated, a heritage chicken is one that was bred and developed *before* the advent of industrial agriculture. They were expected to breed naturally and efficiently. They had parasite and disease resistance through nature and farmer’s culling of sick individuals. They had good survival instincts, being able to forage effectively and stay alert to threats.

Once the hybrid, commercial breeds of chickens were developed in the mid 1900’s, a lot of these traits flew out the window. When raising chickens on a mass-scale, usually in a confinement type facility, these birds wouldn’t need to forage or follow survival instincts. They could be dosed with medication via their feed and water so any selecting towards natural disease resistance went by the wayside. The ultimate goal was rapid weight gain. More chickens out the door to market faster.

Heritage vs. Hybrid

So why heritage and not hybrid? This is a question purely of personal preference and what works best for your set-up. For us, we chose a heritage breed because we wanted a chicken that would be sustainable for our farm. Each year we will be able to hatch eggs from the breeding stock we retained from the previous season. Hybrid might be the right choice for your farm, and there is nothing wrong with that when they are raised in the right conditions. A big, plump pasture-raised cornish cross chicken is delicious!

When raising hybrid chicken like a cornish-cross, you have to order chicks each season because the adult birds grow too fast and become too large to breed naturally. They will often die of heart attacks or become unable to walk because of their gargantuan size if kept alive too long. [Cornish cross generally reach butchering size in 8 weeks, whereas heritage birds can take up to 20 weeks]

Many farmers and homesteaders like to raise the hybrid meat birds because of their quick turnaround. It’s also useful for farms in cold climates where keeping breeding stock year round is logistically too costly or challenging. Those might be factors to consider before choosing a heritage breed. Since we are in Texas, our mild winters allow us to keep animals on-farm year round with little adjustment.

If you want to keep heritage breeding stock, you will need to think about having a separate breeding pen for your birds (if you have other chickens around and don’t want a mix). That’s also worrying about predator control 24/7 instead of the couple of months you would keep your cornish-cross meat birds around. If the goal is to hatch your own eggs from your heritage breeding flock, you’ll also need to invest in an incubator, a piece of equipment that can be very expensive if you need a large enough one to hatch hundreds of chicks at once.

How to choose a heritage breed?

So you’ve weighed the pros and cons and you’ve decided you want to embark on a heritage chicken journey. Awesome! Now, how do you decide what breed of chicken you want to raise? There are scores of chickens that fulfill the requirements of being “heritage” – if you’re just getting started and want to learn more about your options, check out this LIST.

When I was making this decision, I took a couple of things into account:

1. What high quality, meat lines of heritage chickens are available to me via hatcheries or local breeders? (I’ll discuss this a little more below)
2. What breed suits our farm for climate, demeanor, and speed of growth?

Heritage meat birds vs. heritage hatchery birds…

Since many of your standard hatchery birds are not being chosen for meat bird qualities these days (more for mass-hatching and egg laying) if you order a big batch of heritage chicks hoping to grow them to butchering size in 16 weeks you might be very disappointed.

My goal was to either find a hatchery that was offering a “broiler” type heritage chicken (i.e. a heritage chicken that has been maintained and bred to grow meatier than their standard hatchery counterparts) or to locate a good quality breeder that was focusing on using their stock for meat birds.

Back in the old days when heritage chicken breeds were still being raised as the primary type of meat chicken on the market, farmers selected the biggest, strongest birds that matured quickly. They were still slow growing, but they could reach butchering size in 14-16 weeks as opposed to 20+ weeks you may be looking at now if you chose a standard hatchery bird. These older heritage lines had a different body type. They were stocky and strong, with meaty legs and breasts without having difficulties walking and breeding.

Through the years these birds were no longer being selected for meat due to the popularity of the newfangled hybrid meat chickens, so many of these historic meat characteristics fell off the map.

There is an option to “correct” these smaller hatchery birds, if you want to do a bit of a science experiment. You could order chicks, raise them, keep track of their growth by weighing them, and very selectively cull to keep only the fastest growing, meatiest birds. This could take several generations, but in the end you could potentially breed yourself into your very own strain of heritage meat bird that matures several weeks faster than a first generation hatchery bird.

Murray McMurray has a Delaware Broiler that is a heritage Delaware chicken selected to grow faster than the standard Delaware they sell. That was a top choice, but unfortunately all the chicks were sold out for the season when I was looking to purchase. I had also heard great things about Freedom Ranger Hatchery who maintains their own line of semi hybrid-heritage chickens called Freedom Rangers that grow faster than a plain heritage bird but still slower than cornish-cross. In addition to these mash-up hybrids, they also sell true heritage meat birds.

When reading the descriptions of the Delaware and New Hampshire chickens they offer, I was really drawn to the fact that A) this is a hatchery specializing in meat birds and B) their description mentions that these birds are bred by Henry Noll – a poultryman known for developing strains of meat birds.

Since the hatchery selling these birds is focused on delivering quality meat chickens, I knew I would be off on the right foot starting our flock. It was more valuable to me to choose a breed based on what good meat bird stock I could obtain rather than getting my heart set on a specific breed and having to work several years towards a decent bird.

Other Factors

Some other factors you will want to take into consideration are how long do you want to wait for your birds to mature? Friendliness vs flightiness? How will they do in your climate?

Some of the largest breeds of chickens, the Jersey Giant and Brahma, make excellent meat birds, but take a much longer time to grow. These giant breeds can take up to 26 weeks to reach market age. A densely feathered chicken, like a Brahma, might not be the best choice for a hot climate too.

As for personality, this can depend largely on the line of birds you purchase. This is where your fellow chicken raisers might be able to help. I would recommend reaching out to other poultry farmers who raise your prospective heritage breed and quiz them about their birds. Where did they come from and how do they act? Are they aggressive? Skittish? Intelligent? Lap-dog friendly? There is a ton of variation in chicken personality depending on who bred them.

I had a friend tell me that their personal experience with Freedom Ranger’s Delaware chickens was positive and that they were gentle and calm. Very nice traits that I appreciate in my breeding program!

There are also rare breeds of chicken known for their gourmet meat. If you wanted to do some research into your local food scene, you may be able to market some of these specialty birds to restaurants. French birds like Marans and Bresse can fetch high prices in the high end restaurant world. You will be paying a much higher price up front for legit French stock, but it could pay off in the end if you have a steady outlet through which to sell them.

I tended to lean towards the American heritage breeds (Plymouth Barred Rock, New Hampshire, Rhode Island Red, Buckeye, Delaware, etc.) because I liked the idea of preserving a traditional American breed that our great-grandparents raised, and I also liked the speed at which they grew, their size, and their friendly personalities.

Conclusion

To me, the most important aspect of choosing a heritage breed was finding a hatchery or breeder that was able to provide us with a hearty, fast-growing heritage bird while still maintaining its ability to live a long, healthy life. Instead of being set on a specific breed, I was more interested in obtaining a line of birds that would be able to provide us with good results our first year. If you are truly set on a specific breed, you might have to do a bit more leg work in locating a good breeder that focuses on meat bird qualities or even work on breeding a few generations yourself before you get the results you want.

Do some research about your market. Are there enough customers in your area that would prefer to purchase a heritage bird over a hybrid? Your prices might be higher due to the initial investment on quality chicks and maintaining a breeding flock year round.

If all else fails and you have a few options at hand, go with your gut. If your first year of heritage chicken raising isn’t all that you hoped for, try out a different breed the next year. We decided, based on personality and rate of growth, we are only moving on in our breeding program with the New Hampshire chickens next year. There is always room for improvement and learning!