Last century chicken feed

[Mahonri]

As a kid we would make our own mash. We would mix barley and wheat and sometimes we would add dried corn.

We had this contraption that we hooked to the tractor on a belt and it would make the mash for us. We sometimes used it for our cattle also.

 

[Kung Foo Chicken]

According to my dad my grandmother didn't feed them anything. They free ranged the fields and forest near her home. She occasionally gave them a handful of corn or table scraps just to keep them close to home.

 

[digitS']

Quote:
. . . a hammer mill

S

 

[MagsC]

My grandparents also fed a lot of table scraps and corn, plus theirs free ranged.

 

[BigSkyChickie]

Quote:
LOL, I suspect you're right on, there. My chickens free range in a field that also has 2 horses in it and they really seem to do a thorough job getting the seeds from the horse manure. They scratch and peck through it and spread the droppings all out. It's really kind of a neat circle of life type of thing.

 

[valmom]

I tried feeding ours kale from the garden. They were less than impressed Maybe ours are spoiled? Just a bit. I would go scavenge the rest of the kale that is overgrown and freeze it if they liked it.

 

[chicken stalker]

I left a cabbage in my garden hoping to get it later. When I let them into my garden (about 3 weeks ago) to finsih up the leftovers they ate everything then swarmed the cabbage like voltures. It is now just a central stalk, they picked it clean.

 

[setter4]

Quote:
Mine LOVE kale. I planted about 6 plants this year and the chooks have eaten most of them. the clen it clear down to the stalk. They also loved the broccoli and cauliflower plants after the "heads" were picked off.

 

[digitS']

Quote:
"If you feed the horse enough oats, some will pass through to the road for the sparrows." John Kenneth Galbraith, 1982 evaluating "trickle down" economics

It's probably how we got English sparrows spread from one side of North America to the other. But, Galbraith could have been talking about chickens as easily . . .

Steve

 

[hinkjc]

You need to remember that "back in the day" people did not keep poultry for longevity either. Their spring layers typically became winter meals yearly. Keeping that in mind, it didn't really matter what their diet contained because they weren't going to be around long anyway to show the effects of it. If that is your intention (to eat your birds yearly), then you certainly can go back to what 'they' used to do. However, I think most of us would like our chickens to live a few healthy years. Nutritious poultry diets were not created just to make money (altho I'm sure that had something to do with it), but because people and their ways changed as well. JMO

Jody