Quote:
The folks back in the olden days knew that chickens would eat just about anything.
And that is what they fed them.
Now, here's the thing: when you feed your chickens whatever you happen to have, instead of a balanced diet, your egg count starts to drop. Dramatically.
I have a book called The Dollar Hen, written back right after the turn of the century. That's 20th century, mind you. Not the 21st. So we're talking about a book written about 100 years ago.
This guy was able to tap into research being done by the land grant universities at that time, and found out that there was quite a regional variation when it came to the average amount of eggs produced by hens of that period.
The thing is: the HIGHEST average number of eggs laid, when broken down by state, was Conneticut, where hens laid an average of only 100 eggs a year!
The LOWEST average number of eggs laid, when broken down by state, was Louisiana, where hens laid an average of only 40 eggs per year!
These are obviously low egg counts, compared to today's hens.
There were three reasons why hens laid so few eggs back then:
1, Chicken housing was not always adequate -- especially down south. It is interesting that the highest egg counts came from the northeastern states, like Maine, Conneticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York... The lowest egg counts came from Louisiana, Alabama and other southern states. Much of the variation in egg laying by region of the country was due to the fact that the further south you went, the less likely chickens were to have housing at all. Or if they did have housing, it was not very substantial. Chickens living in northern states had to be kept in chicken coops, or else they might die in the cold.
2, The white leghorn and the production red had not yet been developed as high production egglaying varieties.
and finally, the third reason -- the one that ties into the topic of this thread:
3, Chickens were fed whatever the farmer happened to have around to feed them. And this meant that most hens did not get a balanced diet on a regular basis. The average number of eggs laid by hens across the entire country during this time was 65 eggs a year!
I am not sure what the averae number of eggs laid by hens who are not battery hens in high production egg factories is today, but I'm quite sure it is higher than 65 eggs a year!
The difference in the average number of eggs laid per hen at your place today, and the average 65 eggs laid per hen back a century ago is primarily the result of the improved diet of today's hen.
Those ever more costly bags of layer feed are not just convenient to use -- they are also formulated to provide hens with a balanced diet that the chickens did not have 100 years ago. And that is alot of the reason why hens lay so many more eggs than they did back then.
If things get tight, and we are no longer able to feed our hens a balanced diet, we will still be able to feed them most of the year if we can free range them. And with proper planning and putting away food during the summer, we should be able to get them through the winter too. (There are lots of things that we can harvest and freeze, can or dry for the birds during the winter, including lots of edible wild weeds.)
But if they are just eating whatever we have to give them -- instead of a balanced diet -- we should expect a vastly reduced egg count, just when we need their eggs the most.
