When I think about the Bresse chicken found in North America, it almost seems too good to be true.

How did we get yet another one over on the French? Those poor souls. Could it really be as easy as changing the name to American Bresse, Bressy, Bress-a or the multitude of other pronunciations I have heard through the years? Or is there some chicken loophole that one needs to rename the impossible to get Poulet de Bresse in order to avoid INTERPOL on your way home from Europe? Now after more than 10 years of American Bresse hype, I can no longer find articles that were actually written about the French Bresse in its native tongue to gain further insight on the breed. It’s long lost to the marketing pages of American farms looking to hawk a bird regurgitated from a single page on the internet.

My wish is to one day acquire elite stock, the Bresse otherwise known as Bresse de Bény that are closely guarded behind the rumored triple bio security walls. The Gauloise blanche attainable only as a borrowed commodity since its acceptance as a French designated Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée status.

I was among the very first to buy into American Bresse. It was between 2012 and 2013. At that time, I was developing some of our own non-Cornish lines of large dual-purpose breeds and had not quite achieved the growth potential that was found within the Bresse chicken breed.

The Bresse has good production, decent growth and some other traits I have found useful. One such observed trait was when an eagle scouting low altitude prepared for a divebombing attempt. As it dropped into a field of about 100 males, I yelled in fear for the lives of my chickens at surely what was to become a predator's delight and a chicken farmer's worst nightmare. It landed for what it thought would be a quick KFC drive through. It only needed to grab one of the birds in a field of about 100 males. Much to the eagle's surprise, the Bresse went charging towards what I can only imagine as the eagle's white feathered head as the center of the Bresse’s bullseye target. They came in hot! Spurring, pecking and with pure pandemonium and enough noise to wake the dead, As the dust settled, the eagle was able to regain some composure as well as some loft under its wings to reach the top of the 10' perimeter fence. It took about 5 minutes to recover and check its wounds before hungrily flying away.

Bresse males are known for their standoffish and protective demeanor.  They certainly have what I consider attributes for a slow growth dual purpose free roaming pasture raised meat bird. Ours are not calm, they are mostly vigorous. If you cross paths with someone that says theirs are calm and easy going, it's not a Bresse, and if they are, they are likely inbred. Bresse chickens are not a friendly choice for a child, pet, coyote, eagle, or your elderly friends. For a white bird who stands out like a neon sign in a pasture, they cannot and must not be mild mannered or they will only support the diet of your local wildlife. Anyone who has raised white chickens will agree or have a story about white birds and their farmyard predators.  When you raise birds like we do with unconfined forest or pastured poultry rearing, it's a necessity that they are strong and smart. The strong survive, it minimizes losses and makes the next generation better than the last for tractor-less pastoral production. We do find that they mostly breed true, with the occasional sport. 

In recent years, we again acquired a small grouping of Bresse birds from the southeastern US. They looked pretty good to start, and I was very excited about a new line (other than they were 90% roosters.) As they grew, it became a challenging batch of birds. The majority of them had red leakage and black in the hackles as well as shank color issues etc... I’m not one to complain, I do the best with what I’m given. Out of that batch of about 12, we were able to hold 2 decent roosters back and they appear to have added some heterosis to our nucleus flock with minimal mutations.

Most recently we felt the need and initiated conversation with Bechanne (centrebechanne.fr) regarding sourcing various genotyped breeds of poultry to add to our genetic bank. When you purchase Pacific Northwest Bresse from us, you can be assured that we have put forth hours of countless research sourcing stock.

Our process for hatching is in accordance with the USDA NPIP standards. We have always implemented strong standards of hatchery biosecurity. This allows customers to select from vaccinated or unvaccinated birds that have not been exposed to Mareks disease or the vaccine. Our breeding stock is not vaccinated. All the chicks that we produce are from sanitized eggs. We have a small 8' x 20' hatchery and another brooder house of the same dimensions. These are equipped with high quality hatchers with water from UV treated reverse osmosis system, heated poultry towers and just about everything a chick could want to be happy and comfortable. We only incubate and hatch in our hatchery, we only brood in our brooder house. We are not hatching in old wooden hatchers that cannot be properly sanitized or a Hovabator on the floor of our garage, bathroom countertop or wherever "chicken breeders" these days hatch chickens. (I will admit, guilty of the Hovabater on our guest bathroom countertop many many years ago.)

All of our birds are raised on site and hatched on site. Our eggs will not be carriers of Mareks or Salmonella Pullorum or Avian Influenza due to biosecurity, testing and veterinarian visits every 30 days. (If needed, additional testing can be provided by request for a fee.) 
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Our PNW Bresse parents have been raised on pasture, and we have found that they do not need additional care beyond the normal feed, house, warmth, and water. We have found that Bresse birds don't typically require vaccinations. The immunity is locked away in their genetic code, passed down from generation to generation. It's important to remember that flock size remain large enough to remain strong and vigorous. The magic number seems to be around 75 hens and as many roosters as you can house apart from hens while rotating them with hens 10- 12 at a time. 25 hens will normally do well from good breeder stock with as many males as you can house apart from the hens. 

Our final selection of breeders is done intentionally to keep the most genetics in the flock, and you may observe some differences. Although not extreme differences like one would observe between a Cornish Cross and Americana. We have never seen major mutations such as a totally different breed. We have had one complaint in the last 6 years, but when I offered to take the birds back so I could genotype them to see if in fact they were actually related to our birds, the client declined my offer of a full refund+. It was such a totally different bird than ours that when we were told what was happening, it would have served as a wonderful special project if in fact it was an actual Bresse mutation. Our passion is preservation and our breeding programs. We also understand how passionate customers can be about the breeds they keep. But sometimes we encounter some pretty strange feedback or requests, and typically we can accommodate or do our best to help. There are always challenges that come with raising poultry, but so far it has not outweighed the fulfillment they bring.

Every year, we hatch between 600 to 900 Bresse and select from those for a variety of traits. What you receive from us is the roadmap to select the stock that suits your needs. I have found with the Bresse that you can't just throw out the birds that don't fit the mold. As a purist it pains me to say that it's the quickest way to find yourself with an inbred line of birds and no sources to freshen the genetics without stepping away from pure breed preservation. I think that most would agree that an American Bresse Americana would not be a good outcross even though they both have dark legs. I can't really think of a good way to outcross Bresse, one would have to assume the foundation breeds since I can no longer find any documentation. If you have further documentation, please drop me an email. I guess maybe a better comparison would be a Swedish Flower/ Jubilee Orpington/ Speckled Sussex cross although similar will not do anyone a favor when preserving the old lines of genetics, but people still do it. 

If you have already tried Bresse and it doesn't meet your needs, if you are looking for a meatier and more suitable bird around children and farm animals or pets, we would suggest that you raise our Le Grand or Armocks. They are much more suitable for a small market farmer, homesteader or prepper looking to have high quality eggs and meat in a more suitable time frame without the fuss of French cooking. It's very difficult to raise a bird 16+ weeks on pasture and remain profitable. In our local market, we are at the top tier when it comes to price and quality USDA inspected meat.   The Le Grand and Amrock are both sweet and powerful birds that can be crossed as a sex link hybrid to produce chicks for your neighbors and offset the purchase cost and maintenance upkeep. It's a great way to rein in costs and provide a good quality bird to your neighbors without buying commercially available Cornish. We currently have some farms who are now vertically integrated and others who are following our model to be more sustainable and less reliant on shipped or commercial birds. ​

To our knowledge, our Pacific Northwest Bresse are not descendants of Peter Theissen's Canadian Bluefoot. We do know of some flocks that are purported to own Bluefoot stock, but we have yet to acquire them. Nor have we ever intentionally added Bluefoot at any of our farms.  We are preservationists of pure-bred heritage breeds, and doing so would be counterintuitive. I breed enough birds per year to stave off common bottlenecks found in most breeding programs. We import our stock or we acquire from original importer to stay as close to the family tree as possible and have less room for error and disease from birds going through multiple farms. We have done our best to remain as close as possible to the original birds we started with more than 10 years ago. (Less some of the issues that we had when we received them.)  And someday, if we have the opportunity to get some of Theissen's Bluefoot or Poulet Bleu, we will promote it as such and create a separate breeding program for it. Because that is who we are, and the Poulet Bleu venture is quite commendable. 

You have to ask yourself; how do so many breeds of chicken make it to North America from all over the world? Birds like the Malines, Black Bresse, Hungarian Yellow, Euskal Oiloa Basque, and Hrvatica chicken have actually existed in Canada longer than any place on the North American continent. According to what I have learned through my research, both the Black Bresse and the White Bresse have existed in Canada much longer than they have in the USA, mostly due to federal push to build professional population (yes farmers are professionals and fall under the same critical infrastructure as doctors), through spousal immigration and the newly settled individuals love for poultry. There was at the same time a need for a better chicken as the corporate takeover of marketing boards and the commodity industry only allowed small farmers the quota to raise very limited amounts of commercial Cornish in the quota system.
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In the past, prior to today's strict enforcements, people from Canada that visit Europe have been known to pack a few "table eggs" home. I have searched high and low for healthy varieties of birds, often being able to acquire them from the older poultrymen. The ones who know the names of the people that brought eggs or chickens back from many countries all those years ago when life was simpler and diseases less common prior to the near complete takeover of industrial poultry. 

I see this occurring in the US much in the same way after the ban of game fowl sports in the early 1900's, game fowl was only kept by few primarily in the Southern and Eastern states for show and preservation. Now, due to the emergent population in the US, you’ll find a larger selection of game fowl due to migration from Spanish and other non-English speaking nations where fighting cocks are still part of their traditional heritage and culture. 

The more I considered the free ranging border free chicken black market, the more I started to link together marketing and promotion of birds going back hundreds of years and even linked between kings and queens to lawyers, lobbyists and politicians as well as a few of those guys who whisper, "hey buddy" and try to sell you contraband pinned to the inside of their trench coat. And I am not certain I can trust any of the above. 

For a homesteader, breeder or farmer, the Bresse is a cost-effective bird that can generally be finished by 16 weeks and the hens lay a wonderful number of creamy eggs per year.  And for the gourmands out there, if finished right and then cooked right, they can be the best chicken you'll ever have! Feel free to email any questions that you might have. My email address is [email protected].

I'd like to think all of us raising Bresse in North America are in fact doing so, but that nagging question in the back of my head asks, or are we? For now, the old adage "if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, it’s probably a duck" rings true. Plus, I’m not a big fan of raining on people's parades. It’s worthwhile considering, after all, who knows, without genotyping the flock of everyone with American Bresse, I think it’s entirely possible that Bluefoot could actually be the craze known as American Bresse. Do you?

A Spring Creek Heritage Farms Blog Editorial written by farm manager Matthew Nelson Poultryman

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this blog article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the official policy or position of Spring Creek Heritage Farms or of its customers.

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