Cheapest but healthiest food for chickens

[Dollybird1]

Before Purina or such how did poor folks keep their flocks alive and fed?

 

[sourland]

They fed locally sourced grains and allowed their flocks to free range to balance their diets. Anything/everything that threatened their flocks was either shot or trapped and killed.

 

[ChocolateMouse]

Also pre-pelletized food chickens layed less and had smaller bodies. They tended to have acres on acres to roam and were part of integrated livestock systems with cows where they ate bugs and undigested bits from the cow pats and it was just how farms worked and nobody thought of it as integrated anything. Get rid of the ruminants, the family garden, the acres of diversified land, etc. and all that falls apart.

Some warm and plant-heavy places like hawaii have feral flocks of chickens that do fine without human intervention.

 

[ChocolateMouse]

https://www.hobbyfarms.com/historic-henhouse-feeding-chickens-before-bagged-feed/

 

[nuthatched]

They let them free range, chickens ate bugs, seeds, weeds, fruit, plants etc.

 

[Cindy in PA]

Bagged feeds have been around for over 100 years. Read the old poultry mags on Google!

 

[MarkJr]

I pay $0.21 per lb from a local feed guy for 18-20% feed. No calcium. I've noticed my oyster shell consumption has raised a bit.... but these gals seem to do well on it.

 

[TerrellE]

We found and interesting 1913 book on Gutenberg.org (Gutenberg is free public domain stuff) titled Our Domestic Birds by John H. Robinson. He talks about the backyard flock. The most common grains fed in the United States were cracked corn and wheat a couple of times a day, supplemented by table scraps mixed with corn meal or bran to absorb moisture. We were interested in this because we were searching for ways to get off commercial feeds. I don't know what we did wrong, but our chickens aren't too fond of table scraps. It's probably all the treats we spoil them with.