Well, it took us a while, but we are finally getting started on our conservation efforts. We have been on this farm nine years now, but a lot of time was spent fixin' up the house (maybe we need a DIY page?).
Then we finally jumped in on our efforts to raise livestock. And jump in, we did, both feet! Our first year of raising poultry, we purchased 100 chicks mail-order, plus some number of turkeys, geese and ducks.
Our thinking was, since we were new, we'd fail miserably, and we'd be lucky if half of them survived. Well, we were WRONG! Thanks to the information in Joel Salatin's book Pastured Poultry Profits , we were able to successfully raise about 95% of those birds.
That was several years ago. One of the geese is still with us as a layer. The rest we butchered (a lesson for the entire family) and filled our freezer.

Then we discovered ALBC . We decided to gear our animal choices to livestock breeds in need of conservancy. This may sound strange to a lot of people: why grow rare breeds for eating?
Well, the best answer we have found was on the ALBC web-site, and will be paraphrased, because now it cannot be found. It basically said that by encouraging farmers to grow other breeds for your consumption, you keep those breeds alive.
This is because the farmer will continue to breed if there is need, and this will keep those genetics alive and well in our world.
It is amazing the number of breeds that have gone extinct, yet most people (including us, originally) don't think of farm animals as being in danger of extinction.
Here is some information from the ALBC web-site:

Four beef packers control 79% of the market.
Three of these are also pork packers and control 57% of that market.
Four companies control 42% of turkey production.
A handful of people are making the decisions about 
what breeds are raised and how livestock is raised.
As a result, eight breeds of beef cattle, nine breeds of pigs, 
and eleven breeds of turkeys are critically endangered
because they don't fit the industrial model.
Livestock and poultry were once valued for their services as much as for their products.
They controlled weeds, insects, and brush, and gleaned gardens, fields, and orchards.
Today's industrialized agriculture values only the most productive of breeds and discards the rest.
But agriculture is continually changing, and our future needs are uncertain.
Even now, a growing number of people are seeking to build an agriculture 
that is at once sustainable, productive, and humane.
This new agriculture needs exactly what these endangered breeds have to offer:
Thriftiness - Hardiness - Self-sufficiency - Intelligence -Easy births
Good mothering ability - Long lives

So, we purchased some books

	A Conservation Breeding Handbook
Rare Breeds Album of American Livestock

and learned more about these rare breeds through this excellent breed site: Breeds of Livestock - Oklahoma State University.
Then we started to make decisions about the breeds we wanted to raise. Being in Minnesota, it was important to find breeds that could handle the cold. Being organic-oriented, it was important to find breeds that would do well on pasture with little care (self-sufficient). Most rare breeds will fall into this category.
And, we also wanted to help American breeds when we could. That led us to the choice of Pilgrim for our geese, Dominique for our chickens and Bourbon Reds for turkeys.
While the Pilgrim and Dominique were pretty easy choices, the turkey breed was not. We are finding we really like the turkeys for their ease of care and their beauty. We may expand our turkey breeds in the future.
We also chose Oberhasli for a goat breed. We have our eyes (and hearts) on a draft horse breed and a cow breed, but do not have the space, time or equipment to support at this time. We can't make up our minds on all the possible swine choices.

	The Dominique is a wonderful bird. They lay brown eggs and are very colorful. The do very well on pasture. And while our daughter discovered they don't compete well with the leghorns for layers in 4-H, they do very well as breeders. They are an excellent dual-purpose (meat and egg) bird. After getting burned by some less-than-perfect quality birds from a large hatchery, we sought out a local breeder, and are very happy with the birds. We have since had two years of successful breeding of our own birds.
The Pilgrims were a bit more difficult to track down a reputable breeder. We were able to find one by contacting the Holderreads who wrote The Book of Geese: A Complete Guide to Raising the Home Flock This book and many others listed above can be found on the ALBC web store. Our pilgrims arrived two years ago, and we had a successful breeding the first year. This past year wasn't as successful, but we still have our breeding stock and hope for better success this coming year.
	The Bourbon Reds are beautiful birds! We had a fairly successful year our first year of breeding, but not this past year. Again, we are hoping for better success in the coming year, and looking for new breed stock.
We LOVE our Oberhaslis! They are very likeable, charismatic animals. We have four does right now. We had an older doe a couple years back that one of our daughters milked for a season. MMMMM! Fresh goat milk! We hope to eventually get into making our own cheeses, butter, yogurt, etc. as our herd size increases.

That's all we have for now. We will continue to update as we learn more.

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