Heritage breeds are something many have never heard of, but they are part of the building blocks for agriculture today. Jeanette Baranger, with The Livestock Conservancy, was able to give some insight on what these animals are and why they are harder to find.
What Are Heritage Breeds
“Heritage breeds are animals that have been around on farms in the U.S. since 1925 for before. They also have to be purebred and be able to reproduce,” explains Baranger. “There is also a genetic component where we look at if the foundation for which they were bred for is still around.”
Baranger says that one reason that these animals are becoming harder to find is because they are simply “losing their jobs” to newer breeds. Another reason is that some may have not been common in the first place and there was not enough reason to keep them around. Baranger also says that in some cases it could just be that people don’t want to do the work to raise some of these animals.
They use multiple categories to show where these breeds stand as far as becoming extinct. The worst one is critical which has a population less than 2,000 in the world. The next step is threatened, which means the global population is less than 5,000. The last category is watch which is when the animals carry a genetic concern and have a limited geographic distribution. They also have a recovery stage where the breeds are becoming more prominent again and are going in the right direction. For these breeds they watch them for a few years to make sure they keep increasing.
The Livestock Conservancy Efforts
The Livestock Conservancy is following around 200 heritage breeds of various kinds of animals. To help keep these animals around, the conservancy is helping teach people how to raise various heritage breeds as some of them require different needs to reach their full potential. They also help farmers raising these animals with marketing so they can reach opportunities that they might not be able to on their own. Baranger also says that they do have a collection of germplasm stored away in case the breeds reach a level where they could not naturally continue.
