Home Feeding Ideas and Solutions Discussion Thread

[400constantne]

It may be true... that I have turned a "home feeding solutions" thread into a "feeding your chickens...aloned in the woods, with nothing but a loin cloth..." thread; however, only now have we exhaused all resouces . Without going into the extreme one may always wonder what may have been.

The problem with feeding a chicken human food, in order to produce human food, is that it is terribly inefficient. A chicken will eat from 1/4 to a 1/3lbs of feed a day, in order to produce an egg that weighs an ounce or so. The reason that it is so expensive to keep chickens, is because unlike the other animals that we keep, we feed chickens human food.
It is useful to keep goats... because goats eat grass (which is mostly useless for human consumption) and produce milk (which is great for human consumption). The rabbit too, the rabbit likes grass.... and I like rabbit . This works, only because we are feeding animals what would otherwise be useless. Obviously, to feed your goat oatmeal, just to produce milk, would never be efficient, nor practical.

In todays world, I buy my feed from the store. It is cheap, and easy. However, this would not have worked in the days of Stalin... and for all that we know, it may not work tomorrow either.

Unfortunately, if wal-mart ever runs out of food. People will be forced to eat their chickens, rather than to feed them 1/4lb, in order to produce an ounce.

Also, there is no reason that even in todays world, a person couldn't feed their chickens for free... or rather, to feed their chickens what works for chickens.

 

[Kassaundra]

Galanie, when you set your rice wash water to ferment did it seperate into those 3 layers like in the video? Mine did not make any stuff on top. I put it in the milk anyway today, so I'll see in a week or so if it is actually going to work.

 

[Clay Mudd]

It may be true... that I have turned a "home feeding solutions" thread into a "feeding your chickens...aloned in the woods, with nothing but a loin cloth..." thread; however, only now have we exhaused all resouces . Without going into the extreme one may always wonder what may have been.

The problem with feeding a chicken human food, in order to produce human food, is that it is terribly inefficient. A chicken will eat from 1/4 to a 1/3lbs of feed a day, in order to produce an egg that weighs an ounce or so. The reason that it is so expensive to keep chickens, is because unlike the other animals that we keep, we feed chickens human food.
It is useful to keep goats... because goats eat grass (which is mostly useless for human consumption) and produce milk (which is great for human consumption). The rabbit too, the rabbit likes grass.... and I like rabbit . This works, only because we are feeding animals what would otherwise be useless. Obviously, to feed your goat oatmeal, just to produce milk, would never be efficient, nor practical.

In todays world, I buy my feed from the store. It is cheap, and easy. However, this would not have worked in the days of Stalin... and for all that we know, it may not work tomorrow either.

Unfortunately, if wal-mart ever runs out of food. People will be forced to eat their chickens, rather than to feed them 1/4lb, in order to produce an ounce.

Also, there is no reason that even in todays world, a person couldn't feed their chickens for free... or rather, to feed their chickens what works for chickens.

All kidding aside, you raise some valid points.

And it's not at all difficult to imagine a day when "the trucks stop running" -- or at least, that anything that has to be shipped is insanely expensive. Bagged feed has already gotten pricey, partly because of that. And even those of us who mix our own feed usually buy a few ingredients that have to travel a thousand miles or more. So any natural, local (insert your fave buzzword here) feedstuff is worth investigating.

 

[400constantne]

I found this study to be much more readable, and just better written (natural eating habbits of similar bird species):
http://elibrary.unm.edu/sora/Wilson/v048n03/p0186-p0203.pdf

 

[galanie]

Galanie, when you set your rice wash water to ferment did it seperate into those 3 layers like in the video?  Mine did not make any stuff on top.  I put it in the milk anyway today, so I'll see in a week or so if it is actually going to work.

No, it didn't. So I didn't worry about which layer to use, I just dumped in what looked like the right amount for the milk part.

 

[galanie]

It may be true... that I have turned a "home feeding solutions" thread into a "feeding your chickens...aloned in the woods, with nothing but a loin cloth..." thread; however, only now have we exhaused all resouces .  Without going into the extreme one may always wonder what may have been...

...Also, there is no reason that even in todays world, a person couldn't feed their chickens for free... or rather, to feed their chickens what works for chickens.

Amen. And without the crazy stuff. You raise a valid point when you say people feed chickens people food. But we don't have to do that. They'll eat just about anything. I see nothing wrong with trying out banana leaves or bamboo leaves or whatever. Chickens, as raised the way we're "supposed" to raise them and using what is tried and true, is not exactly a money making operation. It's for poor people to do only because the way we feed them you're poor once you do it.

I like when this thread takes off in that direction. When it starts being too scientific and argumentative, I just have to say, "Oh for goodness sakes." Science is only as good as the science used. It often has not gotten the results of individuals. Not because their methods were wrong, but because the science was flawed.

 

[400constantne]

Amen. And without the crazy stuff. You raise a valid point when you say people feed chickens people food. But we don't have to do that. They'll eat just about anything. I see nothing wrong with trying out banana leaves or bamboo leaves or whatever. Chickens, as raised the way we're "supposed" to raise them and using what is tried and true, is not exactly a money making operation. It's for poor people to do only because the way we feed them you're poor once you do it.
I like when this thread takes off in that direction. When it starts being too scientific and argumentative, I just have to say, "Oh for goodness sakes." Science is only as good as the science used. It often has not gotten the results of individuals. Not because their methods were wrong, but because the science was flawed.

No. Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, while expecting a different result, according to Einstein. The only "crazy stuff" are the same old methods being expected to bring about a new solution. That is "crazy stuff." With a little land, and NEW ideas, you can feed your chickens for free. If you use the same methods that you used yesterday, and expect a new solution... you are talking "crazy stuff."

 

[galanie]

Amen. And without the crazy stuff. You raise a valid point when you say people feed chickens people food. But we don't have to do that. They'll eat just about anything. I see nothing wrong with trying out banana leaves or bamboo leaves or whatever. Chickens, as raised the way we're "supposed" to raise them and using what is tried and true, is not exactly a money making operation. It's for poor people to do only because the way we feed them you're poor once you do it.

I like when this thread takes off in that direction. When it starts being too scientific and argumentative, I just have to say, "Oh for goodness sakes." Science is only as good as the science used. It often has not gotten the results of individuals. Not because their methods were wrong, but because the science was flawed.

No.  Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, while expecting a different result, according to Einstein.  The only "crazy stuff" are the same old methods being expected to bring about a new solution.  That is "crazy stuff."  With a little land, and NEW ideas, you can feed your chickens for free.  If you use the same methods that you used yesterday, and expect a new solution... you are talking "crazy stuff."

I don't think anyone mentioned doing the same old thing and expecting different results unless I missed something.

 

[triplepurpose]

It may be true... that I have turned a "home feeding solutions" thread into a "feeding your chickens...aloned in the woods, with nothing but a loin cloth..." thread; however, only now have we exhaused all resouces . Without going into the extreme one may always wonder what may have been.

The problem with feeding a chicken human food, in order to produce human food, is that it is terribly inefficient. A chicken will eat from 1/4 to a 1/3lbs of feed a day, in order to produce an egg that weighs an ounce or so. The reason that it is so expensive to keep chickens, is because unlike the other animals that we keep, we feed chickens human food.
It is useful to keep goats... because goats eat grass (which is mostly useless for human consumption) and produce milk (which is great for human consumption). The rabbit too, the rabbit likes grass.... and I like rabbit . This works, only because we are feeding animals what would otherwise be useless. Obviously, to feed your goat oatmeal, just to produce milk, would never be efficient, nor practical.

In todays world, I buy my feed from the store. It is cheap, and easy. However, this would not have worked in the days of Stalin... and for all that we know, it may not work tomorrow either.

Unfortunately, if wal-mart ever runs out of food. People will be forced to eat their chickens, rather than to feed them 1/4lb, in order to produce an ounce.

Also, there is no reason that even in todays world, a person couldn't feed their chickens for free... or rather, to feed their chickens what works for chickens.

Looking at the historical record, I would argue the case that "feeding a chicken human food in order to produce human food" is not at all "inefficient." It's what was done for thousands of years.

Look at it this way. Much of farming throughout history has been about growing staple crops (providing carbohydrate calories, in the form of grains, usually). Mostly this was subsistence farming, and most people ate what they grew, or what their neighbors grew. As anyone who farms knows, the weather and a million other uncontrollable variables affect the grain yields from year to year--and if you are a subsistence farmer, you need to plant a little extra to take this into account, because if you don't have ENOUGH one year you could very likely starve to death, so you end up routinely have a surplus, because it's better than being dead. This is fine, but it just means that the upshot is you generally have more of your main staple (and maybe other things too) than you can use. You keep a small flock of chickens (relative to the size of your farm), which range completely freely, supplying a small amount of high quality animal products for you to eat, to enrich your grain-based diet. You feed them a little of your surplus grain every day--which is no skin off your back, so to speak, because you always have a little bit of extra grain. Something that is of little use to you (surplus grain), is turned into something very valuable (a little protein and other nutritrion from free-range eggs and meat). Furthermore, the chickens forage for all the rest of their feed--in manure piles from your grazing animals, in your midden heap, in the woods, in the grain fields where they glean fallen grain, in the barns, pastures, woods, etc. So you don't have to supply grit, oyster shell, drinking water, or anything else. The chickens reproduce themselves without your help, as a true landrace does, and while you might do a little selection through culling, when and if you have the time, you don't really need to because natural selection does most of the work for you. It's a complete win-win for everybody and hardly "inefficient" in any pragmatic sense of the word. Inefficient systems don't last for thousands of years--call it "the test of time."

So to try to get to sum up my point here--and unless I'm misunderstanding YOUR point, which is entirely possible --I don't see how feeding chickens "human food" is ineffecient, especially on a sustainable farm or homestead, because aside from what they forage for themselves, you're just feeding them your own surplus produce and household scraps, etc.--bi-products if you will, by which I mean feed sources that are already connected to your other activities and don't require significant SEPARATE inputs. To me that's one DEFINITION of "efficiency." What sounds inefficient to me is the idea of people scouring the woods, peeling pine bark or gathering wild plants or acquiring other feeds especially for the chickens that have no other use to you, the human. I don''t think that's bad per se if it makes the chickens healthy and people aren't destroying pine forests or whatever to do it, but I just don't see how that's more efficient. Yes, BUYING "human food" to feed your chickens may be inefficient, but feeding them on farming surplus "human food," especially such which might be considered "off-grade" or otherwise of little value to people, in order to produce a nutritious diversity of food products, is, as history shows, a very practical approach.

And before anyone gets mad at me for being hopelessly theoretical and out-of-context, I realize also that not everyone on this forum is subsistence farmer--nor am I. That's not my point, of course. My point is that universal principles still apply. In a sense I think part of what makes chickens easy to keep and has made keeping them practical for millenia is the fact that they eat a diversity of things and that they can eat most of the same things that people eat and get by quite nicely on the same staple foods that people can (again, historically, mostly grain, but also this could be potatoes, squash, cassava, etc--me, I don't grow grain, having neither the space, nor the ideal growing conditions, but I do grow with ease many other starchy staple foods). Sure, there are important nutritional differences between man and chicken that are not to be overlooked, but from an everyday standpoint of figuring out what they can eat, not all that different. And how convenient for us humans!

Those are my thoughts on this, anyhow...

 

[triplepurpose]

BTW your comment about feeding chickens "alone in the woods with a loincloth" made me chuckle out loud...