Fossil Ridge Farms
Fossil Ridge Farms is a small farm and breeding operation dedicated to raising heritage breed poultry, cattle, goats and producing local pasture raised foods. This farm is run side-by-side with my parent's grain farm operation.
Here at Fossil Ridge Farms we raise the following animals:
Chickens: Olive eggers and Cuckoo Marans. After a long time of working with other breeds I came to the conclusion that I was no longer happy with the productivity of those animals. I had dual purpose breeds that could neither lay a decent amount of eggs nor reached a decent size for processing, or I had chickens so aggressive it was unpleasant to work with. I decided I would from now on focus my breeding efforts on two birds: my Olive Eggers and my Cuckoo Marans. For my Olive Eggers, since they are not an actual breed, I have a lot of freedom in choosing what traits I want. I can select the best and most productive birds without regard to their appearance. The Cuckoo Marans on the other do need to follow a standard, however before I can go to that I did need to outcross to bring some traits back that they were deficient in (egg production, and size).
Turkeys: Blue Slate; critically endangered in Canada with less then 100 breeding females reported and threatened in the USA.
Ducks: Muscovy; chocolate, blue, black, lilac, cream, white - most being pieds (white patches throughout body). Long term breeding goal is to have solid coloured birds by breeding out the white head gene and pied gene.
Geese: Pomeranian Saddlebacks; critically endangered in Canada with less then 100 breeding females reported and threatened in the USA. Greys and Buffs.
Cattle: Purebred, Full-blood registered Limousin and Red Angus, Charolais, Hereford, Simmental and Black Angus commercial cross cows.
Goats: Purebred, registered Boer goats.
Pigs: Currently no pigs. At one point had Kunekunes, and although they have a very sweet temperament and do not root - I was disappointed with their overall performance.
All animals bred and raised here are constantly judged and scrutinized from the day they are born and long into their productive lives to determine the best animals to keep in the breeding program. Some aspects focused on include vigor at birth, determination to feed, growth on pasture, adult weight, mothering instinct, temperament (calmness or aggression towards humans or other animals)...etc. All these and more come together to ensure only the best, most calm and productive animals are kept in the breeding program. Unfortunetly many places have chosen to use the 'appearance' of breeds as the main factor for choosing breeding stock and have seemingly forgotten about their actually productivity. However here I focus on productivity over appreance, especially with poultry. These animals may not exactly be show winners but they sure will out-performer the others.
Animals Wishlist for the future:
Sheep: Icelandics, Black Welsh Moutian.
Goats: Kiko
