Natural feed?

[U_Stormcrow]

The book makes my point for me.

In the United States in 1920 there were 360,000,000 chickens. They produced 1,656,000,000 dozen eggs.

4.6 dozen eggs per chicken per year. Sure, SOME of those chickens were roosters. But even if half of them were roosters, that's 9.2 dozen eggs per hen per year. About 1 egg every third day.

Then start reading on page 30 (page 26 of the actual book). Those bvirds aren't being raised on nothing, and they certainly aren't being raised on just vegetables.

Then hop to page 36 -

That in no way resembles a Forage Diet, or a Kitchen Veggie Scrap diet. All of those look like diets produced on active farms with multiple grains being grown, supplimented with additional ingredients - milk, meat scraps, alfalfa meal, etc... Indeed, one is hard pressed to find old recipes with a lot of "veggies" in them. Instead,these are recipes to be fed in addition to "green forage", like my acres of weeds. Amusingly (to me, at least), they seem to be getting similar savings, around 25% on average (20-25# vs the expected consumption)

 

[ChickChic00]

The book makes my point for me.

In the United States in 1920 there were 360,000,000 chickens. They produced 1,656,000,000 dozen eggs.

4.6 dozen eggs per chicken per year. Sure, SOME of those chickens were roosters. But even if half of them were roosters, that's 9.2 dozen eggs per hen per year. About 1 egg every third day.

Then start reading on page 30 (page 26 of the actual book). Those bvirds aren't being raised on nothing, and they certainly aren't being raised on just vegetables.
View attachment 3053575View attachment 3053576

Then hop to page 36 -
View attachment 3053578

That in no way resembles a Forage Diet, or a Kitchen Veggie Scrap diet. All of those look like diets produced on active farms with multiple grains being grown, supplimented with additional ingredients - milk, meat scraps, alfalfa meal, etc... Indeed, one is hard pressed to find old recipes with a lot of "veggies" in them. Instead,these are recipes to be fed in addition to "green forage", like my acres of weeds. Amusingly (to me, at least), they seem to be getting similar savings, around 25% on average (20-25# vs the expected consumption)

I'm not looking for eggs, and I'm not looking for a ton of meat either

 

[AGeese]

There's people on youtube claiming they do it on compost. My birds will stay out all day til sun down foraging, drizzle, a little wind, no problem. But I also have heritage breeds I didn't really even need to teach.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

I'm not looking for eggs, and I'm not looking for a ton of meat either

I'm at a complete loss for what you do want, then. Some chickens make eggs very efficiently. To get meat out of them, you need the right breed, yes, but you also need a better diet than egg layers do.

or you resign yourself to eating very small, very old, very tough birds which could have been much larger, much more tender birds, at much younger ages with similar total feed consumption (of better quality feed over a much shorter period of time). With a much higher risk of failure due to illness or predation over the longer time horizon.

Ultimately, as long as they are your birds or your property, I don't care what you do to them - even if its simply proving that they can survive in spite of your efforts to mostly ignore them to death. For what point I don't understand either - chickens have been around longer than we have - so its no great discovery.

You have your answer. Reality does not comport with your imaginings. It rarely does, for any of us.

 

[Weeg]

Addendum: Completely forage diet examples are in climates, on grounds, most of us don't have. Feral chickens in Hawaii, for instance. A few feral colonies in Florida, roughly two hundred miles south of me... They don't produce large eggs, they don't produce eggs often, its anyone's guess how much their 100% forage diet is supplimented by the presence of people (and their gardens, their trash, their pet food, etc) nearby, and GOOD LUCK catching one of those scrawny beasts for the dinner table.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

There's people on youtube claiming

Stop there. That has all the authority of "I saw a facebook meme" or "I read in the checkout aisle", "the infomercial after midnight claimed", and only slightly less than this anonymous guy on a bulletin board "U_Stormcrow" said...

At least in my case, you can follow threads I've created over the past two years to see the weights of my birds, what they looked like at butchering, and check out the links I've left as basis for my opinions. Old books like that cited above, numerous studies, various agencies and institues of higher learning, other governments, compare my claimed experiences with the expectations of recognized experts. I've made plenty of mistakes along the way, expect I will make many more in the years to come.

By all means, VERIFY. One of the best ways of learning for ourselves, in my experience.

 

[arizona_chicken_noob]

I can relate to not caring about egg or meat production, as I don't eat either and got into chickens for their other benefits.

If the purpose is to keep chickens on a shoestring, I also understand that and I think you could make attempts at that goal but without potentially risking your birds too much. If you get there, you get there.

"Because chickens mature quickly and few ethical constraints have been applied to experimentation, our understanding of chicken nutrition now exceeds our grasp of that for any other domestic animal and even for humans." The Chicken Story

^ for this reason I personally choose to stand on the shoulders of giants (the animal nutrition experts) and I have gone with a thrifty heritage breed.

 

[ChickChic00]

I can relate to not caring about egg or meat production, as I don't eat either and got into chickens for their other benefits.

If the purpose is to keep chickens on a shoestring, I also understand that and I think you could make attempts at that goal but without potentially risking your birds too much. If you get there, you get there.

"Because chickens mature quickly and few ethical constraints have been applied to experimentation, our understanding of chicken nutrition now exceeds our grasp of that for any other domestic animal and even for humans." The Chicken Story

^ for this reason I personally choose to stand on the shoulders of giants (the animal nutrition experts) and I have gone with a thrifty heritage breed.

Any particular heritage?
I've got Black Astralorps, Delaware, Buff Orpington, Rhode Island Red, and American Game Chickens

 

[3KillerBs]

1) Take a look at the book Poultry for the Farm and Home, written 100 years ago, that talks about what they did and how they did it. The book does talk about feeding your chickens beef or milk to keep production up.

This book is about educating farmers of the day on how to get 100 eggs per year from a LEGHORN.

The Brahma in my avatar -- the worst layer in my flock -- did better than that.

Even the heritage breeds don't thrive on forage and neglect. They were bred to succeed at producing some eggs, some meat, and some babies to perpetuate the flock on a diversified farm where they could eat spilled feed from other animals and find insects in the abundant manure piles.

Feral chickens -- in a climate were they can live at all -- always revert to a gamey, wild-type sort of bird. That is, small, scrawny, and low-producing.

 

[arizona_chicken_noob]

@ChickChic00 I went to the Livestock Conservancy website and fell in love with the story of the Dominique, so that's what I'm up to! (I feed them bagged chicken feed, if that wasn't clear in my earlier post)

Feral chickens -- in a climate were they can live at all -- always revert to a gamey, wild-type sort of bird. That is, small, scrawny, and low-producing.

^ This seems like a very possible outcome if their nutrition fell short from a homemade diet.