Landrace Chickens and Other Livestock
Jan. 1st, 2022 09:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ysabetwordsmithI found this discussion about developing landrace chickens and wanted to expand on it.
Now technically, a landrace is a type of livestock found in a general area, adapted to its conditions. That usually means a bunch of different people nearby are raising them for similar purposes and exchanging individuals to maintain genetic diversity. However, it doesn't mean you can't do this by yourself. Numerous heritage breeds survived because one person had the last stock of them, and many breeds have started because somebody spotted an interesting trait and promoted it. So let's look at how you could develop a landrace or something similar on a homestead.
* First, analyze your habitat. You need to know what challenges and opportunities your livestock will face. Some areas have extreme weather. The pasture might be full of edibles, but not necessarily what a given species is known for eating. That's okay. Cows typically eat grass, but there are heritage breeds like Highland and Pineywoods who browse other plants like deer and produce useful amounts of milk and/or meat on very rough forage. If there is a local invasive species which is nontoxic, can you raise livestock to eat it? There are goats who eat kudzu.
* Second, define your goals. Do you want to specialize for meat, eggs, milk, fiber, draft, or other uses? Do you want maximum hardiness traits like disease, weather, or predator resistance? Most landraces are multipurpose but you can specialize if you wish. You just have to know what you want, and how to select for it.
* Research your chosen animal type to see which breeds are available. Favor heritage or landrace stock if you can find it, as these tend to have the best genetic variety and traits suited to homesteads. However, some commercial breeds may have qualities you like and are worth including. There are even a few commercial "breeds" that aren't really breeds at all, like Easter Egger chickens or Pinto horses. These are often excellent choices too. More rarely you can find wild types, such as alley cats or mustang horses, which are even better. Researching also gives you a list of traits commonly sought in a given animal type, like egg color and frequency in chickens or color patterns and body shape in horses.
* Obtain as much genetic diversity as possible for your foundation stock. This is much easier with small animals like chickens or rabbits than large animals like cows or horses, but it works with anything. One way to avoid breaking the budget is to spend extra to buy the best male(s) you can afford, because you only need one or two in most cases. Then get the best females you can afford with what's left. They don't even have to be purebreds as long as they are healthy and have traits you like.
* Pay attention to positive vs. negative selection. In this context, positive selection means choosing the individuals with the best traits to reproduce more offspring. The heaviest milker, the most colorful fleece, the hen who hunts mice, the buck who killed a coyote that time, etc. Negative selection means culling any individual, and sometimes their closest relatives, with bad traits. Hens who won't set eggs, goats whose ears freeze off, sheep that wilt in the heat, etc. In most species, aggression is a serious flaw; you don't want livestock that might hurt you or each other. (An exception is when you need them to defend themselves.) Same with sickly individuals, because commercial breeding and small population in heritage breeds means you'll have to weed out a lot of nonsense to get good stock. Be ruthless. You're emulating Mother Nature here, so put on your bitch panties and kill everything that isn't good enough -- or at least take it out of the gene pool.
* Remember that livestock failures are like cooking failures more often than not. You can usually eat the evidence and try again later.
* Continue selection over time. The longer you do this, the better results you should get. Make additions freely in the beginning, but take more care later on. In particular, it's usually a good idea to replace your stud every year or few. Once you have females reproducing consistently, you can then devote your budget to buying or trading for the best stud you can find and afford. If you get a particularly promising male offspring, you can also save him as future breeding stock. This is a good plan later in the development program when you're quite pleased with your landrace and don't want to gamble on outside stock.
* Network with other homesteaders in your area. You will see better outcomes if you have other people to share ideas and especially breeding stock with.
* Name your landrace. While many landraces don't have names, or at least not until they get standardized as a breed later on, a name helps people distinguish your landrace from other animals of the same species. You should wait to do this until you have stock that you like which meet your goals pretty well, thus have adapted to local conditions and are recognizable. This also gives you time to figure out their most salient features and/or range. If you look at landrace and heritage names, you will see that they are most often named for a political place (a town, country, etc.) like Icelandic goats or habitat type like Pineywoods cattle. Occasionally they are named for a distinctive trait, like Easter Egger chickens. The Mulefoot pig started out as a landrace, later standardized as a breed, known for its solid hooves.
Now technically, a landrace is a type of livestock found in a general area, adapted to its conditions. That usually means a bunch of different people nearby are raising them for similar purposes and exchanging individuals to maintain genetic diversity. However, it doesn't mean you can't do this by yourself. Numerous heritage breeds survived because one person had the last stock of them, and many breeds have started because somebody spotted an interesting trait and promoted it. So let's look at how you could develop a landrace or something similar on a homestead.
* First, analyze your habitat. You need to know what challenges and opportunities your livestock will face. Some areas have extreme weather. The pasture might be full of edibles, but not necessarily what a given species is known for eating. That's okay. Cows typically eat grass, but there are heritage breeds like Highland and Pineywoods who browse other plants like deer and produce useful amounts of milk and/or meat on very rough forage. If there is a local invasive species which is nontoxic, can you raise livestock to eat it? There are goats who eat kudzu.
* Second, define your goals. Do you want to specialize for meat, eggs, milk, fiber, draft, or other uses? Do you want maximum hardiness traits like disease, weather, or predator resistance? Most landraces are multipurpose but you can specialize if you wish. You just have to know what you want, and how to select for it.
* Research your chosen animal type to see which breeds are available. Favor heritage or landrace stock if you can find it, as these tend to have the best genetic variety and traits suited to homesteads. However, some commercial breeds may have qualities you like and are worth including. There are even a few commercial "breeds" that aren't really breeds at all, like Easter Egger chickens or Pinto horses. These are often excellent choices too. More rarely you can find wild types, such as alley cats or mustang horses, which are even better. Researching also gives you a list of traits commonly sought in a given animal type, like egg color and frequency in chickens or color patterns and body shape in horses.
* Obtain as much genetic diversity as possible for your foundation stock. This is much easier with small animals like chickens or rabbits than large animals like cows or horses, but it works with anything. One way to avoid breaking the budget is to spend extra to buy the best male(s) you can afford, because you only need one or two in most cases. Then get the best females you can afford with what's left. They don't even have to be purebreds as long as they are healthy and have traits you like.
* Pay attention to positive vs. negative selection. In this context, positive selection means choosing the individuals with the best traits to reproduce more offspring. The heaviest milker, the most colorful fleece, the hen who hunts mice, the buck who killed a coyote that time, etc. Negative selection means culling any individual, and sometimes their closest relatives, with bad traits. Hens who won't set eggs, goats whose ears freeze off, sheep that wilt in the heat, etc. In most species, aggression is a serious flaw; you don't want livestock that might hurt you or each other. (An exception is when you need them to defend themselves.) Same with sickly individuals, because commercial breeding and small population in heritage breeds means you'll have to weed out a lot of nonsense to get good stock. Be ruthless. You're emulating Mother Nature here, so put on your bitch panties and kill everything that isn't good enough -- or at least take it out of the gene pool.
* Remember that livestock failures are like cooking failures more often than not. You can usually eat the evidence and try again later.
* Continue selection over time. The longer you do this, the better results you should get. Make additions freely in the beginning, but take more care later on. In particular, it's usually a good idea to replace your stud every year or few. Once you have females reproducing consistently, you can then devote your budget to buying or trading for the best stud you can find and afford. If you get a particularly promising male offspring, you can also save him as future breeding stock. This is a good plan later in the development program when you're quite pleased with your landrace and don't want to gamble on outside stock.
* Network with other homesteaders in your area. You will see better outcomes if you have other people to share ideas and especially breeding stock with.
* Name your landrace. While many landraces don't have names, or at least not until they get standardized as a breed later on, a name helps people distinguish your landrace from other animals of the same species. You should wait to do this until you have stock that you like which meet your goals pretty well, thus have adapted to local conditions and are recognizable. This also gives you time to figure out their most salient features and/or range. If you look at landrace and heritage names, you will see that they are most often named for a political place (a town, country, etc.) like Icelandic goats or habitat type like Pineywoods cattle. Occasionally they are named for a distinctive trait, like Easter Egger chickens. The Mulefoot pig started out as a landrace, later standardized as a breed, known for its solid hooves.
