Estaires

A critically rare French dual-purpose breed from the town of Estaires in the Nord department of French Flanders. Developed in the early 20th century, the Estaires is a large, well-fleshed white bird with a single comb and clean legs, bred to produce both a good number of white eggs and a generous table carcass. The breed shares ancestry with other great Flemish-French dual-purpose breeds of the era, such as the Bourbourg and Coucou des Flandres, all developed to serve the mixed farming economy of the Franco-Belgian borderlands. Like its regional cousins, the Estaires was nearly wiped out by the shift to intensive poultry farming after 1945. A small number of dedicated French breeders, supported by SCAF and the EE Europastandard, maintain the breed today as a living link to the traditional agriculture of the Lys River valley.