Heritage Breed Livestock

A critically endangered Randall Ox.  One of
only approximately 200 worldwide

In several blogs that I read regularly, there has been an ongoing discussion about the importance of heirloom plants. On the one hand, there are those who believe that heirloom varieties of vegetables, for example, not only provide better taste and nutrition but, more importantly, are better adapted locally, promote biodiversity, and therefore help protect our food supply by maintaining genetic diversity in the world's food crops. Then, on the other hand, there are those who believe that many food and environmental activists are overly nostalgic and living in the past. They maintain that modern plant hybrid crosses produce more vigorous and disease resistant plants and that, in the end, these varieties are better suited to feed the world.  

I thought this might be a good time to extend this discussion to the world of animal husbandry through the following post on heritage breed livestock, portions of which I originally wrote for Monadnock Living magazine.