What chickens free ranging in a traditional management system eat I.E. how it was done before commercial feeds

[NatJ]

Right, I saw that the commercial farms often used dried meat meal and skim milk. I was referring more to the home farm recipes like the one Saysfaa posted this morning.

The one posted this morning, with link and screenshots of certain pages, is the one that I quoted these parts from:

Page 444, a recipe includes "dried beef scraps"
Page 445, "Many poultrymen recommend letting the fowls have free access to dried beef scraps."
Page 452, "One of the most satisfactory meat foods for poultry is the commercial by-product, dried beef scraps. Concentrated meat foods of this sort can be kept indefinitely, and the poultryman can usually place reliance on the chemical composition of the product. Dried beef scraps can be bought in large bags ready for use from any poultry supply house."
Page 452 does also mention, "Cooked meat scraps from the table can be used to good advantage," but they obviously consider this to be a different product than the "dried beef scraps."

So yes, they made a specific mention of using scraps of meat from the table, but the "dried beef scraps" in the recipes are the commercially-purchased ones, not leftovers from home butchering.

The pages I was quoting are the same ones that were included as images in @saysfaa post.

 

[3KillerBs]

If you can reduce your input sufficiently, any meat or eggs you get from them is pure profit. But if you don't have the environment for minimal-input chicken keeping then higher production levels are necessary.

Personally, I know that I don't save any money on eggs, but I do just about break even on sales of started pullets and cull hens (and hope to figure out a good way to sell eggs).

^^^ That's why its important to understand the entire system in which these old recipes existed - the assumptions going in, and the assumptions going out.

Cherry picking parts without an understanding of the whole is a recipe for potential disaster, and virtually guarantees either waste, underperformance, or both. [Either of which you may be OK with, after weighing costs and considering alternatives - I'm just one for making an educated decision, as opposed to assuming things are fine based on some visual clues]. Risk Tolerance and Risk Management.

It's also important to remember that chickens ranging on a diversified farm are benefiting from the spillage, waste, and undigested grain in manure from the feeding of other animals -- being fed secondhand. Also, they'd have ready access to orchard waste and whatever they wanted from the growing crops -- which would also have been diversified rather than dozens or hundreds of acres in a wheat/corn/soybean rotation.

Modern farms are rarely diversified in that way today and most backyarders with limited amounts of land couldn't do it if they wanted to.

and skim milk replaces tankage and other similar feeds."

Skim milk and whey would have been byproduct from the more profitable sales of butter and/or cheese.

I don't have a source, but I remember reading about skim milk and whey being tried as irrigation/fertilization for fields -- with some concern about the build-up of salt content.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

If you can reduce your input sufficiently, any meat or eggs you get from them is pure profit. But if you don't have the environment for minimal-input chicken keeping then higher production levels are necessary.

Personally, I know that I don't save any money on eggs, but I do just about break even on sales of started pullets and cull hens (and hope to figure out a good way to sell eggs).



It's also important to remember that chickens ranging on a diversified farm are benefiting from the spillage, waste, and undigested grain in manure from the feeding of other animals -- being fed secondhand. Also, they'd have ready access to orchard waste and whatever they wanted from the growing crops -- which would also have been diversified rather than dozens or hundreds of acres in a wheat/corn/soybean rotation.

Modern farms are rarely diversified in that way today and most backyarders with limited amounts of land couldn't do it if they wanted to.



Skim milk and whey would have been byproduct from the more profitable sales of butter and/or cheese.

I don't have a source, but I remember reading about skim milk and whey being tried as irrigation/fertilization for fields -- with some concern about the build-up of salt content.

Whey Irrigation
Here
USDA

and the one you may be thinking of. and having now skimmed them, you were thinking of Sharrat 1962.

 

[Florida Bullfrog]

Not on the farm I grew up on in East Tennessee. All the good stuff went to the pigs. We worked to feed the pigs.

The chickens were expected to feed themselves. In winter we'd feed them some corn that we grew ourselves, but the corn was mainly grown for the pigs, milk cow, and plow horses. We did grind some corn for corn meal. Even in winter the chickens found a lot of their own food.

We did not grow show chickens. We were not worried about maximizing their bodies for meat or to make them pretty. Mom could feed a family with five kids with one old hen. We sure did not worry about only eating cockerels at the peak of tenderness when they could be grilled or fried.

Dad had a flock of around 25 to 30 hens and one rooster. When we set eggs under a broody hen practically all of them were fertile and developed. We ate a lot of eggs and sometimes had excess to trade at a country store for coffee or flour, things we could not grow.

What did we spend on these chickens? Other than a little corn that we grew ourselves, nothing. No money whatsoever. For a subsistence farm that's not bad.

Dad had one semester of college, played high school basketball, and was high school senior class president but he wanted to be a farmer. He and Mom both believed in education. Dad read the literature about agriculture and brought in Dominique and New Hampshire to improve the stock. He did pay for those chicks so I guess chickens did cost up some money.

I understand Dad's goals did not match the goals of most people on this forum, but meat, eggs, and even poop to put on the garden for essentially no cost sounds pretty good to a subsistence farmer.

 

[3KillerBs]

and having now skimmed them, you were thinking of Sharrat 1962.

I think it more likely that I read something else that referenced this study, but that is very nearly what I remember. I probably read it some 20 years ago.

 

[Sally PB]

I know the studies were about whey from cheese making, but I dump they whey from making yogurt onto my blueberry bed. I've heard strawberries like it too. The whey from yogurt is acid whey, versus sweet whey from cheese. Which is why blueberries like it.

In the winter, I use the whey to make my chickens' mash snack. They eat it up. Well, they love their mash snack no matter what I mix it with.

I have not tried giving them plain whey in addition to plain water. Hmmmm... I might try that next time I make yogurt.

 

[saysfaa]

Edit to add: I may have gotten a bit carried away. I found some answers I've been looking a long time for - about history in general and feeds. I have mixed feelings about now that I have read more of it.

Wow! This is by far the most valuable source I have found yet.

Among other things is tells what beef scrap is, what screenings and middlings are.

It has a lot of history - both section on history and mixed in via the explanations.

Principals and Practice of Poultry Culture
By John H. Robinson
1912

Source

I started picking out excerpts before I read much of it. Then discovered there is far too much that is worth sharing.

Page 79
"Extensive (giving the birds as much room as they can manage to their own advantage)...
Ordinary farm poultry keeping is theoretically by the extensive method..."

Page 84
Ordinary Town Keeping
Few people who keep town fowls are willing to give up to them as much land as the flock needs for range even if they have the land. The townsman especially interested in poultry almost invariably wants to keep all the poultry his land will carry by any known method. The average flock contains from twelve to fifteen or eighteen hens, is housed in a building having a floor surface of from 80 to 120 square feet, and is given a yard only two or three times the area of the house floor. Under such conditions, fowl can be kept healthy and made productive only with the most careful management, including regular provision for exercise and the variety of vegetable and animal foods that they get when foraging on a good range. ..,

[That is considered an "intensive system"; as is multiple such units with attached sides - commonly ten, twenty, or up to 50 units in a row - so buildings up to 500 or 600 feet long.]...

 

[Geena]

Looks like a good one! I don't have time to read it right now, but I found this very interesting

The average flock contains from twelve to fifteen or eighteen hens, is housed in a building having a floor surface of from 80 to 120 square feet, and is given a yard only two or three times the area of the house floor. Under such conditions, fowl can be kept healthy and made productive only with the most careful management,

If you go by the 120 sq.ft. coop and 360 sq.ft. run for 18 chickens, that's a lot more room than what is generally considered to be the minimum amount of space these days.

 

[saysfaa]

Edit to add: I may have gotten a bit carried away. ..

I really did not need to know how they fattened poultry beyond what he called simple methods. I'd read the worst of it before concerning fatty livers. The book didn't say but I doubt it was done much (because of the labor involved), I would rather not have known that.

The simple method is the take away exercise by crowding them to not less than 5 square feed of yard space and 2 1/2 or 3 square feet of inside room. That alone would do it.

Otherwise, I found skimming it for the info I wanted was far more enjoyable than actually reading it. Thankfully, the link gives a copy with hyperlinks in the index.

 

[saysfaa]

"...Fats (as food) are considered highly concentrated carbohydrates..."

I don't understand how/why wheat screenings (essentially shrunken wheat) can "not differ noticeably from plump wheat in feeding value." Same for Barley screenings...

Oh.

Various pdfs (that I don't know how to link here) from university websites agree that: Four distinct growth stages of small grains are generally recognized for harvest:

• Boot - the stage just prior to heading out. The flag leaf is fully expanded, but the awns and grain head are not visible. The grain head can be felt in the flag leaf sheath. Boot stage lasts for about a week to ten days.
• Flower - the stage where the grain head and supporting stem have emerged from the flag leaf sheath. The plant has completed vegetative growth and entered the reproductive stage. If you shake the grain head into your hand, the yellow pollen may be visible. Lasts about five to seven days.
• Milk - when the grain head begins to develop. A white, milky fluid appears when a kernel is squeezed. Lasts about ten days.
• Soft dough - kernel is well formed and filled with starch. When squeeze, there is no milky fluid, only a rubbery dough-like substance. Lasts about a week to ten days.

And there are tremendous differences in yield and feeding value depend on which growth stage it is harvested.

• Percent crude protein and digestibility are higher at the earlier, less mature stages
• Percent non-structural carb is lowest at the early growth stage and highest at soft dough stage
• Percent lignin is lowest at the early growth stages and highest at soft dough stage

So

I can see how the advantages (higher protein and lower antinutrients such as lignons) would offset the higher (too high?) fiber to result in similar "feed value."

One of the things I value in this book is how different the perspective is - I find it much too easy to let things said the same way a bazillion times slide by without realizing I didn't understand them very well.

I laugh at the fat being a kind of carb. But I have no doubt currant knowledge is off too. I like the parts where Robinson says things like "In Europe, [buckwheat products] use is more common, as the preference there for white fat in poultry makes corn an objectionable food" or "Poultry...will eat the cleaned seed [of broom-corn] as readily as wheat, and thrive just as well on it."

and things like this:

"Cabbage, sown thickly in rows and fed from these sowings without waiting for heads, has been found one of the most economical of green foods." So, is a missing piece? When the many Landgrant Universities put out bulletins on feeding poultry in the first half of the 20th century, did they mean this when they said "cabbage" instead of hanging a head of cabbage?

Answers usually lead to more questions. That is okay.

Edit to correct spelling