Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[Dianne Palmer-Quay <dpalmerquay@gmail.com>]

The American Livestock Breeds Conservancy has a "Pick A Chick" chart to 
help people select the right breed of chicken for their needs.  The link
 is 
http://www.albc-usa.org/heritagechicken/chickencomparison.html

It is harder to pasture rabbits - they tend to dig out and can also jump several feet in the air.  They are easy to raise in cages but that wouldn't get you pastured meat.

Have you considered ducks?  I am reading "The Resilient Gardener" by Carol Deppe and she makes a strong argument for ducks as a dual purpose, foraging, laying flock (she likes Ancona ducks).  Try to get a copy of the book and check out chapter nine.  The gardening information is slanted to her locale - maritime NW - but there is quite a bit of valuable information in this book.  I checked it out through inter-library loan and am debating buying my own copy.

Dianne in SC 
(I only have production breeds of laying chickens 
right now but am thinking of starting a breeding flock of a heritage 
dual purpose breed, and my family raised meat rabbits when I was a teen, and I just bought three Muscovey ducklings (before I read the book), which are a meat breed of ducks.)