Before modern day complete feeds folks let their birds free range mostly. They'd feed whatever they had, typically corn or maybe some other grain, or not feed anything at all but just let the birds cleanup the feed spilled by the other livestock plus whatever they could forage for themselves. From early spring through about late fall they would get eggs, more in the spring with the number slowly dwindling until they stopped laying. Works as well today as it did then - if you can let them free range over some good ground and maybe clean up feed spilled by other stock, get access to manure piles, and so on. If not it's going to work badly.
There were commercial poultry farms going all the way back to at least the mid-nineteenth century and perhaps further. We did not know enough then to create complete feeds so the birds were typically kept in large pastures, fed scratch grains, and whatever mash mixtures they were able to create. It worked well enough, but made things like eggs and chicken meat pretty seasonal. Cheap in the spring, expensive in the winter.
.....Alan.
