Rare animals rekindle a barnyard past
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Woke up early this morning and watched CNN as I ate my instant Korean Ginseng Porridge and a very interesting snippet on endangered farm animals came on! Did a search on cnn.com for the article and I thought the animal lovers in Club 30 would enjoy reading this :
Owner is preserving endangered livestock
Jennifer Cermak is at home on Berlin Farms with her rare royal palm turkeys. (Globe Staff Photo / Bill Polo)There are those who dedicate themselves to saving the endangered family farm.
Jennifer Cermak of Berlin wants to save endangered family farm animals.
A fourth-generation farmer with a PhD in pathology and who works by day at a biopharmaceutical company in Cambridge, Cermak owns rare farm animals that are believed to be on the brink of extinction, including Sumatra chickens, Southdown sheep, royal palm turkeys, and a Friesian horse. She is hoping her rare birds and livestock will bring what she calls "agritourism" to her 24-acre property. Her work, experts say, is crucial to keeping alive memories of America's rural past and protecting food supplies in an era when deadly diseases like Asian bird flu threaten to wipe out segments of the food chain.
"Most people don't even realize there are endangered barnyard animals," said Cermak, 35, a Maryland native who purchased Berlin Farms on Route 62 a year ago. "There's a lot of press on endangered tropical plants, because they lead to medicine. People forget their backyards."
The idea behind agritourism, she said, is for people to see how traditional farms operate while providing a haven for animals listed as threatened by the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy, a North Carolina nonprofit organization that tracks populations of threatened farm animals. The US Fish & Wildlife Service's list of endangered species does not include domesticated animals.
Not all of Cermak's animals are endangered. But all of them work or serve a function on the farm, she said, from her potbellied pig named Bell, a common farm animal that recycles organic refuse, to the threatened speckled Sussex chickens, which lay eggs used in the homemade pies sold at the farm's store.
"You need a bird that will produce eggs and be unique and attract people," Cermak said. "You're being concerned and good-hearted, but you're also thinking about what's good business. You try to look at things as dual-purposed."
The animals most in danger of extinction on Cermak's farm are the Sumatra chickens, black birds with long tails originating from their namesake island in Indonesia. Brought by sailors to the United States centuries ago as souvenirs, fewer than 500 Sumatras exist in the country today, according to the conservancy.
Another member of a rare species on the farm is Quincy, a majestic black Friesian horse whose breed was imported to the United States from Holland in the 1600s.
Fresians have bounced back in the last few decades as participants in dressage competitions, said Marjorie Bender, research director for the conservancy. There are about 1,000 Fresians in the United States, according to conservancy data. Cermak said she earns money by loaning Quincy out to other farms as a stud.
Other endangered animals at Berlin Farms include royal palm turkeys, of which around 10,000 exist in the country, and Southdown sheep, which the conservancy recently listed as "recovering," no longer on the brink of extinction but their numbers still need to be monitored. Cermak's speckled Sussex chickens are among 1,000 in the United States, according to conservancy figures.
Many of her animals were common on American farms a century ago, when farmers raised animals outside in pastures and chose breeds that suited regional conditions, Bender said. New Englanders needed animals able to withstand harsh winters, for example.
Since the rise of corporate farming, Bender said, farms have moved their flocks and herds indoors into warehouse-like conditions. They've been able to genetically modify different types of breeds into single strains that grow faster and larger in a shorter period of time. As a result, farms have become increasingly less diverse, often because older breeds develop too slowly to be profitable on a grand scale.
That doesn't mean farmers can't make money off rare breeds, however, Bender said. Many populations of at-risk species, like the Fresians, Southdown sheep, and royal palm turkeys, have been modestly increasing in recent years because gourmands are willing to pay more for them.
"The quality of these food products tastes excellent," said Bender. "The eggs are fabulous. The flavor of the meat differs between breeds and is very, very tasty. You'll have different levels of fat, marbling, the length of the muscle is different."
Sumatras have traditionally been ornamental birds, and are not well suited to mass production for food. Sumatra feathers, like all colored chicken feathers, leave behind a dark mark in their flesh where they've been plucked, an unappetizing feature compared with the clean-looking skins of white-feathered birds, said Donald Schrider, an expert on chickens at the conservancy.
They're also feisty, able to fly short distances, and can jump as high as 6 feet, Schrider said.
"These are difficult to catch if they get out," said Cermak, pointing to her Sumatras roosting in their pen.
Bender said farmers like Cermak are important because, without them, a piece of American history would disappear.
"They are the caretakers of an inheritance," Bender said. "They have inherited a vast amount of knowledge and skills specific to a breed and its peculiarities. We are at serious risk of losing that knowledge base."
Also, said Bender, rare animals have untapped potential in their DNA. Asian flu and other scourges could potentially wreak havoc in humanity's food supply, she said. Some older breeds that have survived for centuries might be more resistant.
"Should disease go rampant through commercial flocks, and they find that there is no resource for controlling that disease, we may find the piece of genetics we need in the breeds that have been conserved," Bender said. "This is like a bank and we keep it on the hoof, alive."
In Berlin, as Cermak looks over her blueberry bushes and the shack where she hopes one day to boil maple syrup, she's more inclined to wax poetic about her farm and the farming life.
"This is getting rarer," she said. "People are getting a sense of nostalgia. They're realizing they have to protect this."
© Copyright 2007 Globe Newspaper Company. -
Take a look at the aforementioned very cute and pretty Southdown Sheep!
Oh my gosh!! The wool grows right to the edge of their noses!! Makes them look masked and gives them a shy demeanour! Sooooo cuuuuute!!
"Babydoll sheep were believed to have reached the Untied States in 1803. One of the oldest English breeds of sheep is the Southdown, who originated on Southdown hills of Sussex county, England. These little babydoll sheep make wonderful pets and produce a fleece, which is in a class of cashmere. Their fleece has more barbs per inch than any types of wool, which is an ideal blend with either angora rabbit or goat wool. "
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they look ..... delicious ...
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i hope that's not an excuse to rear exotic animals!
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Originally posted by Fatum:
they look ..... delicious ...
x 2 -
Originally posted by Fatum:
they look ..... delicious ...
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Originally posted by av98m:
x 2 Is this what the two of you think about when you see the photo of the very cute babydoll sheep?!
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Originally posted by newcomer:
i hope that's not an excuse to rear exotic animals!
Even if it is, it still preserves a gene pool in case something happens to wipe out an entire species of cross-bred livestock.
I don't think anyone will maintain a farm just to rear pets. The owner is a research scientist too.
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Originally posted by Rhonda:
Is this what the two of you think about when you see the photo of the very cute babydoll sheep?!
lamb chops ...... *slurps ...
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Originally posted by Fatum:
lamb chops ...... *slurps ...
Now I know you not only have two brains like a typical man, but you seem to have a 3rd brain too! 
Peng Sanz! -
Originally posted by Rhonda: Now I know you not only have two brains
like a typical man, but you seem to have a 3rd brain too!
Peng Sanz!
it's all on the brain stem ....
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Originally posted by Fatum:
it's all on the brain stem ....
Eee-yerh! Sounds like you got some huge tumour there!
Quite abnormal thinking leh! -
This is how a handsome friesian look like. Charming.
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baby lamb rack and ribs...lamb shacks..omfg..yumz
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Originally posted by newcomer:
This is how a handsome friesian look like. Charming.
mmmmmmmm ..... Mcdonald's burger patties ......
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eh....dun forget those tulang..
kambing soup
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tulang soup is nice!
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Originally posted by Rhonda:
Is this what the two of you think about when you see the photo of the very cute babydoll sheep?!
mmmmmm...yes
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Originally posted by Rhonda:
Take a look at the aforementioned very cute and pretty Southdown Sheep!
Oh my gosh!! The wool grows right to the edge of their noses!! Makes them look masked and gives them a shy demeanour! Sooooo cuuuuute!!
"Babydoll sheep were believed to have reached the Untied States in 1803. One of the oldest English breeds of sheep is the Southdown, who originated on Southdown hills of Sussex county, England. These little babydoll sheep make wonderful pets and produce a fleece, which is in a class of cashmere. Their fleece has more barbs per inch than any types of wool, which is an ideal blend with either angora rabbit or goat wool. "
OMG so cute but at the same time I keep thinking of lamb chops :x
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Originally posted by newcomer:
This is how a handsome friesian look like. Charming.
Wow this is one majestic looking horse!!!!!
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Originally posted by elindra:
Wow this is one majestic looking horse!!!!!
Yeah!! The horse looks like a pai kia horse... reminds me of those ku wak zai (Cantonese) movies that Ekin Cheng and Nicholas Tse used to star in, or even Japanese action movies, where it's common for the male leads to sport long fringes covering one eye.
Didn't know that pai kia horses exist, sporting the same look some more!! I think the horse in the 2nd photo looks like it's posing. It looks like a Metrosexual Horse!
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You know what, how can you guys look at the cute sheep and think of lamb chops?!!
Tare, you'd better hide your Bubbles in case they look at him, and think of Stewed Dog Meat!
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mmm... 香肉
but then when i look at sheep and lamb, i don't think of lamb chops.. i think of gyros and souvlaki...
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To be accurate I think of MM's Lamb Chops
It's been a while since we had an outing there :x
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looking at the horse, suddenly.. i thought: horse sashimi...
