CABBAGE HILL FARM– Rare Breeds/Geese

We’re at a farm in Westchester County, New York, where rare breeds of domesticated animals are being raised. I’m Jim Metzner, and this is the Pulse of the Planet, presented by the American Museum of Natural History.

You may never see these animals on most commercial farms, but their existence is beneficial to all domestic livestock. John McMahon is the animal curator at Cabbage Hill Farm in Mount Kisco, New York.

“These are Shetland goslings, from the Shetland Islands, which is about halfway between England and Norway. Our primary goal with the geese is to reproduce them and then redistribute them so they don’t go extinct. We manage to successfully hatch out four here. (5:16) These animals aren’t commercially profitable. They are not raised by the millions for food consumption or production. But how those animals that we rely on so heavily today in the agricultural industry were formed was by breeding together all of the characteristics of all of these smaller breeds of animals. What you’re left with is a hybrid that excels at all things, but there’s only one of those. Without maintaining all of the original groups of animals that today’s production animals were bred from, there’s no where else to go. There can be no breeding for further characteristics; there can be no furthering of the breeds.”

In other words, these rare breeds of geese represent a kind of insurance policy for the future, because if you breed livestock to produce just one hybrid, there’s no genetic diversity. And if that one hybrid should become susceptible to a disease, you’d want to have other breeds on hand that might be disease resistant.

Pulse of the Planet is presented by the American Museum of Natural History. Additional funding for this series has been provided by the National Science Foundation. I’m Jim Metzner.

CABBAGE HILL FARM-- Rare Breeds/Geese

On an New York farm, rare breeds of livestock represent a kind of insurance policy for the future.
Air Date:04/19/1999
Scientist:
Transcript:

We're at a farm in Westchester County, New York, where rare breeds of domesticated animals are being raised. I'm Jim Metzner, and this is the Pulse of the Planet, presented by the American Museum of Natural History.

You may never see these animals on most commercial farms, but their existence is beneficial to all domestic livestock. John McMahon is the animal curator at Cabbage Hill Farm in Mount Kisco, New York.

"These are Shetland goslings, from the Shetland Islands, which is about halfway between England and Norway. Our primary goal with the geese is to reproduce them and then redistribute them so they don't go extinct. We manage to successfully hatch out four here. (5:16) These animals aren't commercially profitable. They are not raised by the millions for food consumption or production. But how those animals that we rely on so heavily today in the agricultural industry were formed was by breeding together all of the characteristics of all of these smaller breeds of animals. What you're left with is a hybrid that excels at all things, but there's only one of those. Without maintaining all of the original groups of animals that today's production animals were bred from, there's no where else to go. There can be no breeding for further characteristics; there can be no furthering of the breeds."

In other words, these rare breeds of geese represent a kind of insurance policy for the future, because if you breed livestock to produce just one hybrid, there's no genetic diversity. And if that one hybrid should become susceptible to a disease, you'd want to have other breeds on hand that might be disease resistant.

Pulse of the Planet is presented by the American Museum of Natural History. Additional funding for this series has been provided by the National Science Foundation. I'm Jim Metzner.