About This Stamp
These stamps pay tribute to heritage breeds, pre-industrial farm animals that are enjoying renewed attention for their versatility, adaptability, and unique genetic traits. Heritage breeds of livestock take us back to our agricultural roots — and show the way to a more sustainable future.
The stamps feature photographs of 10 heritage breeds: the American Mammoth Jackstock donkey, the Narragansett turkey, the Cayuga duck, the San Clemente Island goat, the Mulefoot hog, the Cotton Patch goose, the American Cream draft horse, the Barbados Blackbelly sheep, the Milking Devon cow, and the Wyandotte chicken.
Since the worldwide adoption of industrial farming, a few breeds of livestock have been standardized for maximum productivity. As a result, many other breeds with different traits are now critically endangered, and several are extinct. These pre-industrial breeds, known as heritage breeds, possess a priceless genetic diversity that can help farmers and society at large adapt to variable conditions, ranging from new consumer tastes to a landscape altered by a changing climate.
Proponents of heritage breeds continue a pre-industrial tradition of raising diverse livestock to thrive in local environments or under certain types of farming conditions. Breeds like the ten shown on these stamps have proven their ability to adapt to specific challenges. Guarding these and similar animals from extinction offers humanity crucial resources not only for known problems, but also for unforeseen crises in the future.
Heritage breeds are especially important for small-scale, sustainable farms, which the public can support by purchasing their products, including milk, cheese, eggs, fibers, and meat. Public interest in the products of heritage livestock encourages farmers to continue to raise these breeds to meet demand, which in turn helps ensure their conservation. Heritage livestock are also valuable cultural resources. Across the country, living-history farms and historic sites are increasingly working with nationwide associations of breeders to acquire and raise heritage breeds, not only to preserve these animals but also to provide a more authentic sense of the past.
Zack Bryant designed the stamps with photographs by Aliza Eliazarov. Greg Breeding served as art director.
The Heritage Breeds stamps were issued as Forever® stamps in panes of 20. These Forever stamps will always be equal in value to the current First-Class Mail® one-ounce price.
Stamp Art Director
Greg Breeding
Greg Breeding is a graphic designer and principal of Journey Group, a design company he co-founded in 1992, located in Charlottesville, Virginia. He was creative director until 2013, at which time he began serving as president and continued in that role through 2023.
Breeding’s fascination with modernism began while studying design at Virginia Commonwealth University. His affinity with the movement continues and motivates his ongoing advanced studies at the Basel School of Design in Switzerland most every summer.
As an art director for postage stamp design since 2012, Breeding has designed more than 100 stamps covering a diverse array of subjects, from Star Wars droids and Batman to Harlem Renaissance writers and the transcontinental railroad.
His work has been recognized in annual design competitions held by Graphis, AIGA, PRINT magazine, and Communication Arts.
Breeding lives in North Garden, Virginia, with his wife and enjoys nothing so much as frolicking on the floor with his grandchildren.
Stamp Designer
Zack Bryant
Zack Bryant was strongly influenced by street art and the music scene while growing up in Richmond, Virginia, where he played in bands and designed show posters and album art. He attended James Madison University's College of Arts and Letters, studying abroad in Eastern Europe and graduating in 2004 with a focus on graphic design. After teaching and freelancing, he joined Journey Group in Charlottesville, Virginia, as a production designer; he now serves as Principal and Studio Director. Bryant also manages a small farm just outside Charlottesville, where his family raises heritage breed pigs, ducks, sheep, chickens, and goats.
Bryant's design projects for the U.S. Postal Service include Heritage Breeds (2021) and Pony Cars (2022).
Existing Photos
Aliza Eliazarov
Photographer Aliza Eliazarov’s passion for documenting issues surrounding food and farming has driven her work and led to numerous projects, publications, exhibitions, and awards, most notably her book and calendars as well as cover stories for Modern Farmer magazine. She’s as happy as a pig in poop while in fact lying in it on small farms across the country, looking through her lens at heritage breeds and falling in love with every duck, donkey, and goat she meets. Her talent for connecting with seemingly common farm animals in uncommon ways is revealed in her moving portraiture.
Eliazarov has collected her work in On the Farm: Heritage and Heralded Animal Breeds in Portraits and Stories, a photo-driven book that includes compelling facts, stories and histories of the various livestock and poultry breeds she photographs.
Eliazarov is a graduate of the Photojournalism and Documentary Photography program at the International Center of Photography. She holds a master's degree in Creative Arts in Education from Lesley College and a B.S. in Natural Resource Management and Engineering from the University of Connecticut.
Existing photographs by Eliazarov are featured in the U.S Postal Service stamp issuance Heritage Breeds (2021).
