Florida Bullfrog
Crowing
I hope this question makes sense. I'm newer to chickens and did not grow up in a family that had them. On BYC, and in real life, I have heard people say that their grandparents didn't feed their chickens any commercial feed, but simply threw the flock a small amount of grains/scratch such as corn, oats, barley, etc. every day and let them find the rest of their food by grazing. People have said you can't do that with today's chickens because they are bred to produce eggs so much that they have dietary needs only the commercial feed can meet. So my question is, is this really true, or are there still breeds that can survive this way? If so, which breeds?
This is all hypothetical, but I can't help but wonder how families raised eggs and meat for hundreds of years using these methods, and now suddenly we can't. I understand why my production RIR can't live on a handful of scratch every day, but I even hear people say the heritage breeds can't. Are we too far away breeding-wise from the breeds of old to do this? Or were chickens back then actually very short-lived and our standards are higher now so we feed this higher quality feed? Well, this has turned into more than one question so I'll stop here, but let me know what you guys think.
Edit: I also wanted to add that I do understand the chickens way back when produced fewer eggs and less meat. I am just asking about why chickens supposedly can't be raised at all using this method anymore.
A brief history of the domestic chicken:
1. They were domesticated several thousand years ago in Asia from primarily the red junglefowl and to a lessor degree other species of junglefowl. The primary purpose of their domestication was for cockfighting, not food. Those first domestic chickens are called "gamefowl" today. Gamefowl were generally raised free-range around villages.
2. Cockfighting spread like wildfire across the ancient world, becoming what is likely the most universal sport across cultures until the modern era. Two main families of gamefowl developed. The first family retained the straight comb and general look of the red junglefowl. We sometimes call that family "bankivoid" today, from the mistaken belief that those first gamefowl were developed from the Javan subspecies of red junglefowl (Gallus gallus bankiva). The second family had longer legs, shorter wings, longer necks, and generally had more of a dinosaur appearance. We call those "oriental" or "Malaynoid" gamefowl and are represented by the Malay, shamo, aseel, and similar types today. For many centuries, the only known chickens in the world fit in one of those two categories.
3. The Greeks adopted cockfighting from the Persians. We don't know if those first Greek fowl were bankivoid or oriental, but they were one or both of those two gamefowl types. The Greeks began selectively breeding gamefowl and started to morph them into coop chickens more like we would recognize.
4. The Romans adopted Greek poultry raising practices and further modified chickens to create several coop breeds, although the gamefowl still continued to exist. Rome was a rich society and widespread poultry keeping was primarily a luxury of the rich country gentry. Slaves tended the chickens daily. Food was bought for them from markets or grown on the estate.
5. When Rome fell, their specialized coop chickens went extinct due to being unable to receive pampered care. The chickens that survived through the Middle Ages were gamefowl and those coop breeds that were able to revert to a more gamefowl-like form.
6. Chickens spent the next several centuries living free range around villages and farms, mostly taking care of themselves. Many of the gamefowl were kept pure to themselves, but most other chickens were free-range landraces. Within a region, the chickens may have shared similar traits, but with enough variety among them that we might not call them a true breed today, more of a type.
7. In the 1700s, people began to rediscover exactly how much animals can be changed through selective breeding. Most of our domestic animal breeds today have their origins from the 1700s through the early 1900s. Chickens are no exception. Western societies especially began to create what amounted to new versions of the Greco-Roman coop chickens but with a lot more variety.
8. Even with selective breeding, chickens were still mostly living free range through the late 1800s. That meant that natural selection was the first factor that determined if a chicken lived or died. The chickens that survived were the ones that could find their own food, avoid predators, and resist disease.
9. In the early 1900s, commercial chicken feeds were developed. Widespread chicken reproduction shifted to hatcheries. Natural selection was no longer the driving force behind deciding what chickens lived or died.
Now today, both families of gamefowl still exist. Gamefowl should be thought of as an intermediary or a missing link between wild junglefowl and domestic chickens. They have traits of both. It's generally the gamefowl that are going to be good at living free range and taking care of themselves. There have been many other landrace breeds from around the world, but the difficulty will be finding those that aren't far removed from living the free range lifestyle. Even gamefowl these days are rarely raised free range as they used to be.
You'll have to do some digging, but I believe most people in the US live within driving distance of one or several farms that keep a flock of self-sustaining chickens. It requires asking around. Usually these flocks are kept by old-timers who missed the memo that chickens can't be raised that way. You want those chickens to be your seed stock. Usually they'll be some variety of gamefowl.
I don't believe it takes living is a rare or specialized habitat to have a flock of chickens that take care of themselves. Most of the world raised chickens that way, whether it be in the tropics or temperate regions. But what it does take is a farm. Some patch of green earth with some variety of plants, insects, and habitat. I believe it takes about 2 acres to raise a flock on.
An urban flock is most certainly capable of taking care of itself. But it isn't going to stay confined to your yard. It's going to live on your city block and forage and scavenge across multiple yards.