Pellet vs Free Range/Foraging

[U_Stormcrow]

FL is also a big cattle state, fwiw.

 

[saysfaa]

..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.

...My cows get a mineral block once every month or two depending on how fast they eat and lick it down.

The reason my animals can live here is I picked tough animals that were historically raised like this.
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Florida is in fact one of the harshest places to farm in the lower 48. The mild winters don’t make up for the terrible soil and the drought-flood cycles that define the climate. ...
Generally livestock was freeranged in Florida. The cows, horses, pigs, sheep and chickens were turned out into the woods to fend for themselves. This began with the Spaniards and continued through the English, French, and American periods. Natural selection created over the centuries Florida landraces of all of the mentioned livestock that can take care of themselves.
The primary difference I think between myself and many of you is that people in the interior of Florida were living 19 century existences at the end of the 20th century and I witnessed first hand how poor people live off the land. The livestock has to take care of itself or else it can’t be kept. That was the norm in human history....

I agree that is how farming has historically been done in your area of Florida. I would agree it is because the land is too poor to support much more.

I disagree it was the norm in history, worldwide. Most people lived on fertile land (note where cities are - usually, the bigger the cities, the more fertile the nearby land). Fertile land allows enough return on investments like cultivation or rotational grazing to be worth doing it.

Or look at paintings, documents, architecture, descriptions, archeology, and language (an acre is the amount of land a team can plow in a day).

Interesting that you are using cracker cattle as an example of success. They are like game chickens - they don't produce much more than replacements for themselves. Not much meat; not much milk/eggs. This isn't a knock. One of my brothers went the route of max production with the associated high inputs. Another brother went lower input, lower output... not as low as your model but he milked two or three cows for the same amount of milk as one cow gave in the high input model. He had higher labor costs for milking but lower costs for other aspects (like rotational grazing was enough for most of his feed where the record producers needed more and higher energy feed.)

Anyway. This: "The reason my animals can live here is I picked tough animals that were historically raised like this." Is a key reason your system works. The brother that went the low input route did something similar. He picked genetics that were not known for high pounds of milk per lactation. And picked the types of pasture plants that work best for this.

In cow forums we've been on, people will often want "grassfed" cows. They see it is done well in New Zealand. They don't realize it takes selecting animals that will work in that system, or that very few places in the US can grow the grass like New Zealand can.

A sidebar - you might consider loose mineral instead of salt blocks. Cows can't lick enough to get all they need unless they are getting almost all they need in other ways.

Anyway, I'm not sure if I'm considered a naysayer or not

Again, those of you in the free range naysayer crowd ...harsh winters,...But you all know the original position you’re starting from is doubting that chickens can forage for what they need even the warm months. Otherwise you all would be arguing “yes, chickens can get what they need when its warm. We just contend they need supplemental food in the winter.” Which is not what most of you are really arguing.
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But, I agree with you, partly and sort of.
Yes, chickens can get all they need by foraging when the environment has all they need. I just think there are a lot more reasons for it to not be available than just winter.

 

[Florida Bullfrog]

I don't think anyone is naysaying chickens foraging for themselves, only that it's not possible for everyone to raise chickens in this manner everywhere.

You say Florida is one of the harshest places in the country to farm, so of course I had to go look.
https://www.fdacs.gov/Agriculture-Industry/Florida-Agriculture-Overview-and-Statistics#:~:text=In 2020 Florida ranked first,corn; and fourth in peanuts.

Florida’s 47,400 farms and ranches utilize 9.7 million acres and continue to produce a wide variety of safe and dependable food products. From the citrus groves and the nurseries in Central and South Florida, to the vegetables in various regions around the state, to the cattle and calves throughout the state, these farms and ranches provide Florida with a large and stable economic base. In 2020 Florida ranked first in the United States in the value of production for oranges, sugarcane, fresh market tomatoes and watermelons; second in the value of production for strawberries; third in cabbage, grapefruit and fresh market sweet corn; and fourth in peanuts.

Can't be all that bad.


I wonder if that is behavioral or because they need to range further to meet their nutritional requirements or a combination of both?

The plant crops you’re talking about are industrial mono-crops selected either because they’re odd-man-out plant that love Florida’s poor, acidic, soil and temperamental climate, or because (as is the case in most of these) they’re grown by Big Agg through the wide-scale dumping of industrial fertilizers and soil amendments, which is destroying Florida’s environment.

You may be surprised to know Florida no longer has a citrus industry. Destroyed by a disease called the greening over the last decade.

Now livestock is different. Florida was the primary producer of beef for the US through the middle 1800s, because of the aforementioned Cracker cows that lived wild in the woods. The wild cows replaced bison in the woodscape and until the 1930s the wild cattle were rounded up out of the woods and driven north or to the costal ports.

Today north central Florida is the primary producer of race horses, moreso than Kentucky. That central county (Marion County) has alkaline soil full of lime and calcium and it grows horses faster on pasture than other places. But that’s an anomaly for the state.

Generally people who tried to homestead in Florida starved if they didn’t take up hunting or fishing and learn how to grow things that likes the soil. The Spaniards constantly failed to establish inland colonies due to the inability to farm European-style here. The kind of jack-of-all-trades farming homestead farming practiced in much of the US didn’t historically work here.

 

[saysfaa]

https://books.google.com/books?id=POVaAAAAQAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=inauthor:"Herbert+Atkinson"&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&source=gb_mobile_search&ovdme=1&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiXs7mF_Z35AhXUsYQIHSagC8sQ6wF6BAgIEAU#v=onepage&q&f=false

There’s one I have on hand and I’ll pull some more this evening. This one doesn’t got into detail on specifically winter raising but it more generally talks about them taking care of themselves in chapter 6 via foraging.

Thank you. This is interesting.

I like arial views of farms too.

 

[saysfaa]

...

Generally people who tried to homestead in Florida starved if they didn’t take up hunting or fishing and learn how to grow things that likes the soil. The Spaniards constantly failed to establish inland colonies due to the inability to farm European-style here. The kind of jack-of-all-trades farming homestead farming practiced in much of the US didn’t historically work here.

Oh. I must have misunderstood what you were saying about the historical, worldwide farming methods.

 

[Geena]

The plant crops you’re talking about are industrial mono-crops selected either because they’re odd-man-out plant that love Florida’s poor, acidic, soil and temperamental climate, or because (as is the case in most of these) they’re grown by Big Agg through the wide-scale dumping of industrial fertilizers and soil amendments, which is destroying Florida’s environment.

Well, yeah, that's the only kind of farming there are reliable statistics on, that I could easily find. Unfortunately commercial crops are grown that way in every state. Maybe odd-man-out plants in your book, but a person could easily live off of oranges, strawberries, cabbage, corn, peanuts and meat.

There are a LOT of things I can't grow here either, because my soil isn't suitable for some plants, the climate isn't right and/or the growing season is too short. My point being that Florida is definitely not unique in that respect.

North Dakota- wheat, peas, flaxseed, honey
Maine- potatoes, blueberries, hay, maple syrup
Texas - cattle, cotton, milk, chicken, corn
Maryland- chicken, eggs, corn, soybeans, barley

One has to grow what they can where they are. I'm not surprised a lot of people starved back in the day, in Florida and elsewhere. There's a steep learning curve to growing/raising anything successfully, and especially so for somewhere that you are not familiar with.

 

[Iluveggers]

I am very much interested in Native American farming methods, to preserve soil fertility. I’ve learned about about growing produce in NY by studying the Iroquois methods, but have not done research on other areas of the US. Looks like Florida used to be a very fertile place. Unfortunately settlers ruined much of the land.

http://nativeamericannetroots.net/diary/953

I personally would love to range my chickens 12 months of the year but our winters can be brutal. Mine will be allowed to range in the snow, however there isn’t much to find when there’s 2 feet of snow or it’s below zero for a week.

 

[NatJ]

Florida is in fact one of the harshest places to farm in the lower 48. The mild winters don’t make up for the terrible soil and the drought-flood cycles that define the climate. “There’s a reason” that Florida was a frontier wilderness until the 1960s or later. If you’re laughing at my statements about Florida, you’re doing so from a position of ignorance about the land.

You're right, I shouldn't have laughed.
But it still sounds quite well suited to some kind of animals and plants (evidence: all of your points about what people did raise, plus what other people are actually producing & selling there.)

Every climate has its problems, and they aren't all the same.

That food may have to be put up in winter for some livestock doesn’t diminish my point, because most of you in the naysayer camp are doubting that chickens can forage for themselves without major human intervention even in the rich, warm, months. And that’s where you are simply not aware of how people have done it in the real world out of necessity.

I thought you were saying that chickens should be able to forage for their own food ALL YEAR LONG. Just in the good months is a very different thing.

And @3KillerBs point about whether feral chickens live somewhere is clearly limited by winters-- a flock that dies in the winter is no longer there next summer.

If you think it's reasonable for people to provide some food at some seasons, you're making a very different point than I thought you were.

 

[Florida Bullfrog]

I am very much interested in Native American farming methods, to preserve soil fertility. I’ve learned about about growing produce in NY by studying the Iroquois methods, but have not done research on other areas of the US. Looks like Florida used to be a very fertile place. Unfortunately settlers ruined much of the land.

http://nativeamericannetroots.net/diary/953

I personally would love to range my chickens 12 months of the year but our winters can be brutal. Mine will be allowed to range in the snow, however there isn’t much to find when there’s 2 feet of snow or it’s below

Well no, it wasn’t that Florida was fertile. If you ever heard about the first European explorers like Hernando de Soto and Ponce de Leon, their expeditions generally ended in disaster because they couldn’t find much food to eat. Most of the early explorers died of starvation and disease, if not attacks from the natives. The natives practiced very limited farming based around a handful of crops that were adapted to Florida. Native settlements concentrated around fertile pockets of hardwoods and bamboo thickets we call hammocks and canebrakes respectively. Places where leaves and grasses decayed and created pockets of fertility. The natives were mostly relying on natural produce such as palmetto berries, acorns, and swamp cabbage (palm-tree heart), but more than that they were hunting and fishing.

The white settlers that survived did so by adopting the natives’ ways and by free ranging their livestock.

There was once an array of Florida adapted crops that went extinct with modern agricultural supplements that improve the soil. A few native crops that are left are Seminole pumpkins and currant (now called “Everglades”) tomatoes. Old Florida homesteads will still often have the adapted bananas and figs.

Florida didn’t really get ruined until the 1950s-1960s in South Florida and the 2000s in North Florida. Florida’s population more than doubled from 1980 to 2020. Prior to the influxes that happened in those regions during those times, the Florida landscape was just woods and primitive homesteads scattered around with the occasional village.

 

[Florida Bullfrog]

I wonder if that is behavioral or because they need to range further to meet their nutritional requirements or a combination of both?

My take on it is that its behavioral. The reason I think that is because the few surviving factory layers I have have survived because they adopted the gamefowls’ ways. With the exception of Leghorns, it takes about a dozen factory/hatchery type layers or duel purpose birds to produce 1-2 survivors that make it free range long term. Of the dozen that used to meet me at the gate, 2 survived and are now homebodies that run with the gamefowl. Prior to that, I had 1 survivor of the previous dozen. Leghorns went 5 for 5 surviving and I simply moved them off farm so they wouldn’t breed into my games. Leghorns already have somewhat game-type builds and I produced some half-breeds that looked like games. So I didn’t want to risk unauthorized mixing. And I didn’t like them molting white feathers everywhere. The Wyandottes went 2 out of 6. Easter Eggers went 1 out of 4.