My 4th great grandmother used to keep a journal of what happened when she moved to Kansas (1900's). Chickens back then were housed and raised much differently then they are today. She used to speak about watching the chickens roost up in the trees or on top of the house, (Kansas used to have almost NO trees, but she spoke how they used to use trees back in Virgina) Chasing them out of the garden all day long in the summer (remember, back then, most people, atleast in kansas, had gardens large enough to not only feed their family for the summer, but also enough to can or store to make it though winter.) and the chickens getting in trouble by raiding the seed bins (bins of grain the farmers saved over winter to help replant over the spring if sections failed to survive the winter and also used to supplement ALL the farm animals in the blizzards when nessacary). Just about every family had cattle or goats, usually a mule or horse, and sometimes pigs (the way she wrote about them though, they were a bit rarer.)
I wish I could just can and upload the journal for you to peruse, but unfortunately it is just too large...
What I did do was find links to other websites that sort of speak about the same things.
http://www.plamondon.com/faq_feed.html
This website really speaks about how chickens of the past used to be fed, and what the health outcomes were for the chickens. While I dont agree with the whole article, his point number 2 does sort of set up how chickens used to be raised... The main point to take from the article is how extremely large of a space you will need to maintain a small flock of even 2 hens and a roo over the winter.
http://www.americanheritage.com/content/chicken-story?page=2
Here is a crediable source on how chickens USED to be raised. The link starts you on page two because that is where the bulk of what you were asking about is on.
Overall, you cant just get 15 modern day chickens and let them be self-sufficent but still produce well on just 2 or 3 acres. What might be able to achieve though, through careful planning, culls and land space, is a large flock of old-breed chickens in the summer with little or no suppliments beyond kitchen scraps maybe, and in the winter, a very small flock of non-producing animals, that most likely will need atleast some minor supplimentation just due to the fact that modern conditions just are not the same.
I wish I could just can and upload the journal for you to peruse, but unfortunately it is just too large...
What I did do was find links to other websites that sort of speak about the same things.
http://www.plamondon.com/faq_feed.html
This website really speaks about how chickens of the past used to be fed, and what the health outcomes were for the chickens. While I dont agree with the whole article, his point number 2 does sort of set up how chickens used to be raised... The main point to take from the article is how extremely large of a space you will need to maintain a small flock of even 2 hens and a roo over the winter.
http://www.americanheritage.com/content/chicken-story?page=2
Here is a crediable source on how chickens USED to be raised. The link starts you on page two because that is where the bulk of what you were asking about is on.
Overall, you cant just get 15 modern day chickens and let them be self-sufficent but still produce well on just 2 or 3 acres. What might be able to achieve though, through careful planning, culls and land space, is a large flock of old-breed chickens in the summer with little or no suppliments beyond kitchen scraps maybe, and in the winter, a very small flock of non-producing animals, that most likely will need atleast some minor supplimentation just due to the fact that modern conditions just are not the same.
