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

[saysfaa]

North Dakota, 1907

In addition to sometimes free ranging, chickens were fed:

Grains, greens (even in winter), and meat (even when partially replaced by milk)

This paper only sort of gives recipes. It looks more variable than what I would call a recipe.

Source
North Dakota Agricultural College
Bulletin 78

 

[Florida Bullfrog]

I think this is all a lot less complicated so long as your goal is just sustaining the flock and getting enough eggs to eat (as opposed to obtaining maximum efficiency). All they need is a bunch of grass, weeds, leaf litter, and cover that most temperate and subtropical farms would provide during the green months in the amount of about 2 acres. My family’s gamefowl lived wild back in the woods like wild turkey. They weren’t fed. Of course, places with severe winters will have different considerations during those months.

I don’t think many poor farmers were feeding their chickens during the warm months. They definitely weren’t reading books about how to feed them. There are books about keeping poultry the Romans wrote in the BC era that talk about keeping them in coops and feeding them
rations. Those Roman chickens died out when Rome’s supply chain and wealth dissipated. The feral, self-sustaining, chickens inherited the world until the 1700s and 1800s when we started morphing them back into coop birds again. Many poor farmers never got the memo and kept keeping chickens semi-feral well into the 1900s.

 

[saysfaa]

I think this is all a lot less complicated so long as your goal is just sustaining the flock and getting enough eggs to eat (as opposed to obtaining maximum efficiency). All they need is a bunch of grass, weeds, leaf litter, and cover that most temperate and subtropical farms would provide during the green months in the amount of about 2 acres. My family’s gamefowl lived wild back in the woods like wild turkey. They weren’t fed. Of course, places with severe winters will have different considerations during those months.

I don’t think many poor farmers were feeding their chickens during the warm months. They definitely weren’t reading books about how to feed them. There are books about keeping poultry the Romans wrote in the BC era that talk about keeping them in coops and feeding them
rations. Those Roman chickens died out when Rome’s supply chain and wealth dissipated. The feral, self-sustaining, chickens inherited the world until the 1700s and 1800s when we started morphing them back into coop birds again. Many poor farmers never got the memo and kept keeping chickens semi-feral well into the 1900s.

I agree with a lot of that. With the possible exception of poor farmers not reading books about how to feed them. My family were poor farmers (at least on my Dad's side; Mom's side were farmers that were much more prosperous) but also were probably reading things like this. They were also college professors (in the 1800s) and school teachers. That is, "poor farmers" in the lack of money sense, they seem to have known what they were doing other than picking the least productive part of the county - too sandy, too steep, etc.-

Mom's side either also did a lot of reading or were very perceptive based on what Grandpa told us about what he did. There were a lot of school teachers on her side too. I know they did a lot of reading, including things like this, by the time I was old enough to notice.

I started to say there is a reason I am finding these from places with significant winters ...then I realized that is where I looked. Duh.

Most of what I find assume both feeding during the summer and pasturing (either as we think of it or as free ranging), too. I can't tell how many people of the time did that vs this being the beginning of the intensified farming. There are a lot of rabbit trails related to the beginnings of that shift.

 

[saysfaa]

Maybe I should leave off more of the ones that essentially say nothing new, like the last one doesn't. That one was because I figured out how to more consistently find older info.
What do y'all think?

I think it would be interesting to see the difference in different climates but I don't know that I'll invest the time since it doesn't also help me in this climate.

 

[Geena]

North Dakota, 1907

In addition to sometimes free ranging, chickens were fed:

Grains, greens (even in winter), and meat (even when partially replaced by milk)

This paper only sort of gives recipes. It looks more variable than what I would call a recipe.

Source
North Dakota Agricultural College
Bulletin 78

A lot of these old articles and recipes make me smile. Things were so different and in some ways much simpler back then.

I assume they often include milk in the recipes because most farmers had their own milk cow(s) and meat scraps because people often did their own butchering. That all kinda loses the original intent when these days you'd have to go out to the grocery store to purchase these items.

Also, I don't know about other folks in different parts of the country and other countries, but I don't even have easy access to bags of different kinds of straight whole grains. There's nothing available in my feed stores other than corn and oats. I can special order wheat and some other things.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

^^^ 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.

 

[Florida Bullfrog]

Maybe I should leave off more of the ones that essentially say nothing new, like the last one doesn't. That one was because I figured out how to more consistently find older info.

What do y'all think?

I think it would be interesting to see the difference in different climates but I don't know that I'll invest the time since it doesn't also help me in this climate.

I don't think there's anything wrong with sources that are repetitive if the goal is to document the oldest literature possible that suggests what thoughts were on free ranging in earlier eras. My criticism is only directed towards the thought that the writings in fact reflect the widespread free-range practices at the time. They may be. Or they may not be and may instead be more of a reflection of changes in agricultural science happening at the time that indicate more about how we got to where we are now instead of where we started.

In other words, I'm challenging the interpretation specifically relating to writings from the early 1900s reflecting the state of free-ranging prior to that point. The early 1900s is when we started changing over to the current method of chicken keeping by raising chickens strictly in coops and relying on daily rations of prepared food that are becoming commercially made at that time. I think the writings of the time are reflecting that evolution, which is focused heavily on making chickens provide the maximum benefit to man in terms of egg laying and meat production. This is the time frame where we started realizing we could boost the performance of the animals by paying close attention to their nutrition, and the state of the tools of scientific study was getting to the point that we could understand a lot more about what was going on inside the bird and making in depth study of nutrition more possible.

The challenge I'm making is not a reflection of how you're researching. You're doing excellent finding old sources and posting them up. I'm merely debating their meaning. Which is generally what historians sit around and do all day.

 

[NatJ]

I assume they often include milk in the recipes because most farmers had their own milk cow(s) and meat scraps because people often did their own butchering. That all kinda loses the original intent when these days you'd have to go out to the grocery store to purchase these items.

Milk, yes several of them mention using milk that was produced on the farm, and talk about whether it is worth more as poultry feed than what it could be sold for.

But the "meat scraps" or "beef scrap" was typically an ingredient that was purchased, not made on the farm. It was cooked down to a dry form, much more concentrated than fresh meat.

Fresh meat has about 75% water and 20% protein by weight. Source:
Source: https://www.fsis.usda.gov/food-safe...aration/food-safety-basics/water-meat-poultry

The "meat scraps" and "beef scrap" had protein ranging from 50% to over 60% and was often included in a dry mash mixture.

Checking that in several of the sources provided:

1910 bulletin from Kansas State University

Book page 283 (going by the page number in the corner) says:
"Beef scrap is probably the best and most convenient substitute for meat that can be used. It is made by the packing houses from scraps of meat that have been cooked and dried. It keeps well and is easily handled. The popular way to feed it is in a dry mash with the other meals, but it may be fed entirely alone."

This 1939 research paper - Link to research -

page 15, "A 62 percent protein meat scrap was used in this experiment. "

page 29, "All pens received the following all-mash mixture fed dry in hoppers" with ingredients including "Meat scrap (50% protein)"

page 41, "Meat scrap (50% Pro.)"

And, for perspective regarding the above post, one state over in Kansas for a similar time frame (1920 - 1924)

Hens averaged about 80 eggs per year.

Source

Page 11-12, "animal product feeds such as tankage and meat scraps, have a place on many farms. However, an increasing number of farmers are mixing their own feeds, using home - grown grains, and skim milk replaces tankage and other similar feeds."

Michigan State 1927
Source

It covers feeding for eggs
And care and feeding for chicks

Page 7 of the caring for chicks section includes "Meat scrap, 50 per cent protein" as an ingredient in the dry mash mixture.

North Dakota, 1907...This paper only sort of gives recipes. It looks more variable than what I would call a recipe.

Source
North Dakota Agricultural College
Bulletin 78

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."

 

[Geena]

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.

I get a kick out of the commercial recipes too though. Imagine feeding meat and milk to chickens to get eggs. I don't think those numbers would add up too well at today's prices!

Some countries prohibit feeding meat to chickens now anyway. Besides, I would think that for the past 50+ years almost all "extra" meat and whey products are funneled straight into the dog and cat food market, where the big money is.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I assume they often include milk in the recipes because most farmers had their own milk cow(s) and meat scraps because people often did their own butchering.

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.