Pellet vs Free Range/Foraging

[saysfaa]

Feeding grain to horses pre 1900s

• https://blog.biostarus.com/feeding-horses-1800s/
• https://blog.biostarus.com/feeding-horses-1856/
• https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/Black_Beauty/4
• "And the horse ... is obliged to have the sixth part of a bushel of oats every night," wrote Walter of Henley, the mid-thirteenth-century commentator, who remained the best authority on English agriculture until the time of Fitzherbert, https://archive.org/details/thomasjeffferson00edwi_0/page/n24/mode/1up?view=theater (page xxi)

And cattle
"But the ox has only to have 3V2 sheaves of oats per week" Walter of Henly. https://archive.org/details/thomasjeffferson00edwi_0/page/n25/mode/1up?view=theater (page xxii)

 

[3KillerBs]

I think its a false comparison to allege that chickens cannot thrive free ranging on farms where they do not live feral in nature.

Fortunately, I never said that.

In fact, I SPECIFICALLY said that the diversified small farm is the sort of place where chickens can be kept without directly feeding them -- because they are fed indirectly through other farm activities.

Wheat harvesting and processing is not a tidy process, especially when the thrashing and winnowing was done artisanally by hand. Picking up every grain that was left in the field or accidentally fell in the dirt is not practical when you have quantities to process. Letting the chickens clean up the fields and pick up spilt grain puts what would otherwise be wasted to productive use.

Precisely.

 

[3KillerBs]

There wouldn't be any chickens to argue about without human interference.

Right. They are not wild animals formed by nature to survive in the wild.

Which is why we owe them proper care and the provision of an environment where they can thrive.

There are places where that means only importing them into a rich, diverse landscape with favorable weather. Most places are not those places.

 

[Florida Bullfrog]

How many of you actually came from a farming background?

When I’m talking about farming, I mean having a patch of green earth and livestock that lives off the green earth. There is no major harvesting of grains and this or that being left or any sort of complicated operation. You stake off a defined area and turn the animals out and check on them once or twice a day. They do the rest. That’s how livestock farming has been for the average dirt farmer in history.

Every animal I have, except my dogs, lives off what the land provides. Grass, bugs, weeds, small animals. The land provides those things and that’s what my livestock eats. I throw the free range chickens a few handfulls of crumbles a day. Such a small amount that a single 50lb bag could last me months over 50+ birds. My cows get a mineral block once every month or two depending on how fast they eat and lick it down.

My land is not magic. Its some of the harshest farmland in the eastern US. The only benefit I have is that it doesn’t snow here, but we do have multiple freezes that kill back the succulent greenery and insects.

The reason my animals can live here is I picked tough animals that were historically raised like this.

The only animals I have that take a lot of money and time each day are my coop chickens that I raise as a hobby to breed to show standards. I’m about to go tend them. It will take all of 5 minutes to check the free range flock and the cows and 30 minutes or more to feed and water all the coops. If the feed stores ever dried up, I’d be turning out the coop birds to fold in with the free rangers and they’d either sink or swim. And my feed bill would drop to virtually nothing.

 

[Florida Bullfrog]

Fortunately, I never said that.

In fact, I SPECIFICALLY said that the diversified small farm is the sort of place where chickens can be kept without directly feeding them -- because they are fed indirectly through other farm activities.



Precisely.

You’re moving the goal posts again. You were arguing farming by feeding the chickens food grown for them or other livestock. In your mind a “diversified small farm” is a complicated operation where all sorts of food is being grown for the animals. My position is that a farm conducive for chickens is nothing more than a patch of greenery with some grazing animals that eat said greenery and a variety of naturally growing grasses and weeds and cover, with a high insect yield.

 

[3KillerBs]

You’re moving the goal posts again. You were arguing farming by feeding the chickens food grown for them or other livestock. In your mind a “diversified small farm” is a complicated operation where all sorts of food is being grown for the animals. My position is that a farm conducive for chickens is nothing more than a patch of greenery with some grazing animals that eat said greenery and a variety of naturally growing grasses and weeds and cover, with a high insect yield.

No, you are determined to misread what I have said.

 

[Shadrach]

Some posters have placed great importance on the idea of a balanced feed.
Obviously the term balanced implies some ratio between componants that must be kept to ensure this balance.
The main arguement in these debates is commercial feed will provide this balance while forage/treats may not.
So which of these feeds is balanced?
There is a large difference in the composition of commercial feeds with no apparent ratio maintained between the componants.

 

[NatJ]

When I’m talking about farming, I mean having a patch of green earth and livestock that lives off the green earth. There is no major harvesting of grains and this or that being left or any sort of complicated operation.

Then what do YOU call it when people grow grains and other plants for themselves to eat? And they often grow those grains and other plants to sell to other people. I call that "farming" as well.

You stake off a defined area and turn the animals out and check on them once or twice a day. They do the rest. That’s how livestock farming has been for the average dirt farmer in history.

Do you think there is a fence around that area? If so, it was not the norm for most of human history. Fences take materials and labor to build.

So it would have been more normal for a person to spend their time herding the animals, or tether them, or just turn them loose to wander (depending on the time and the area.) The larger the human population in a given area, the more certain it was that the livestock were NOT wandering loose untended.

Also, a large number of large livestock used to be used for work: plowing fields, pulling carts, carrying packs, being ridden, and so forth. Those were certainly not being turned loose to find their own food during the workday. Also, their owners did not want them to wander away or get stolen. So they would typically be tethered, stabled, or fenced when not working (but often not a large enough fenced area to naturally produce the food they needed.)

Moreover, any area with cold snowy winters either had to do without livestock, or provide for their needs in winter. For example, there is a long tradition of barns, haymaking, storing grain and root vegetables, and similar activities in northern Europe. There is a similar tradition in the northern US and I think Canada, although of course that tradition was brought over by the Europeans. The people here before the Europeans had their own traditions, but livestock do not seem to have been a big part of them.

Every animal I have, except my dogs, lives off what the land provides. Grass, bugs, weeds, small animals. The land provides those things and that’s what my livestock eats. I throw the free range chickens a few handfulls of crumbles a day. Such a small amount that a single 50lb bag could last me months over 50+ birds. My cows get a mineral block once every month or two depending on how fast they eat and lick it down.

I'm glad it works on your land, in your climate, but that is not the pattern everywhere.
That style of raising livestock requires that people live in a climate with a warm enough winter, and you can't support very many cities with that farming model either.

My land is not magic. Its some of the harshest farmland in the eastern US. The only benefit I have is that it doesn’t snow here, but we do have multiple freezes that kill back the succulent greenery and insects.

Harsh?
There's a reason Europeans used words like "paradise" to describe the Americas when they discovered them. You've got workable temperatures, and enough rain that "succulent greenery" exists to be killed by your freezes.

 

[saysfaa]

I come from a farm background.

As in 160 acres, Angus beef herd, a couple of ponies for the kids to ride, cash crops of strawberries, black raspberries, a couple of acres of tomatoes, ten or fifteen acres of sweet corn and sometimes potatoes or pumpkins or cut flowers. Plus patches of lots of things for us to eat or to see if they did well before deciding whether to expand. For a few years we had a boar and thirty sows. I remember a try at chickens but was too young to help with them - it did not go well. Pasture, woods, hay fields, corn, small grains, fruit, bees...

When I was about 7, we bought 14 Holstein springing heifers and a couple of old Holstein cows and put in a grade A dairy. By the time I left for college, we'd bought neighboring farms and were milking 60+, three times a day. And still doing the tomatoes and sweet corn and various other crops.

Both sets of grandparents were farmers - similar to us before the dairy: fairly typical mid-century, midwestern family farms. They farmed with horses, milked a half dozen cows by hand, a kept a few dozen hens, and various field crops, but were primarily growing cherries and peaches. I remember most of it and LOTS of stories. And helped with some of it. One set retired when I was in high school, the other farmed another ten years.

All my siblings were/are farmers - ranging from a few acres of intense vegetable and small fruits (and a few hens) to bigger than my parent's farm (but still family farm scale). I married a city slicker and planned farms for entertainment and preparation for retirement when we planned to move back to the farm (for me; he's felt no pull to it). And took my kids to the farms for weeks at a time every year.

 

[NatJ]

In your mind a “diversified small farm” is a complicated operation where all sorts of food is being grown for the animals.

Considering what "diversified" means, I think that is the correct usage.

In my mind, a "diversified small farm" is also a complicated operation, with many kinds of food being produced (plants and animals.) Even when the focus is on producing food for the people, there is plenty that can be usefully given to the animals. For example, if you grow apples, you can sell some, eat some, make cider from the less-perfect ones, but there are some that are not suitable for any of those. The apples that are not wanted by any person would typically be fed to the animals. Similarly for any other crop.

Also, in any climate with a long snowy winter, a farm with animals DOES have to produce (or buy) food specifically for the animals to eat during the winter. Otherwise, they will have no animals by spring (starved to death.)

My position is that a farm conducive for chickens is nothing more than a patch of greenery with some grazing animals that eat said greenery and a variety of naturally growing grasses and weeds and cover, with a high insect yield.

Climate matters. You don't have a long snowy winter. It makes an enormous difference to your animals, and also to your knowledge and assumptions about how animals can be and should be raised.