What did people feed chichens before there was a feed store?

[heatherscooby77]

No matter what you feed, remember the oyster shell!!!!

 

[AmyLM]

No matter what you feed, remember the oyster shell!!!!

and dont forget the grit too.

 

[Davaroo]

I'll let you in on a secret - cornbread. Make it in giant sheet pans and use all your leftovers in it, including extra eggs. Everything is fair game in this 'chicken hoecake.'

Feed it as crumbles, or as a dampened mash, what they'll clean up in 15 minutes. They will go nuts for it.

 

[Den in Penn]

Haven't thought about the cornbread and left overs for quite a while. Mom used to make that once and a while, for the humans she was raising. She made it in layers, a bed of cornbread, a mix of leftover veggies and meat, toped with a layer of corn bread. Of course at times she made it with other bread types too.

 

[Vamvakas]

Well both of my parents came from Greece in a small village. My moms father was a farmer for he grew corn for his chickens, my grandma grew sesame seeds and mixed it with egg yolk for baby chicks.

 

[Davaroo]

Haven't thought about the cornbread and left overs for quite a while. Mom used to make that once and a while, for the humans she was raising. She made it in layers bed of cornbread a mix of leftover veggies and meat top layer of corn bread. Of course at times she made it with other bread types too.

And if you were so inclined and had the space, you can easily grow and mill your own meal with corn. Which is why it has become so prominent in agricultural schemes the world over. It is a good source of carbohydrate, offers no small amount of protein (12%), creates useful livestock fodder and provides for many other useful things.

 

[triplepurpose]

Also, someone may have alluded to this already, but I'd like to emphasize that genetics make a big difference. To expect chickens to survive and do relatively well under free-ranging, hardscrabble, low-input, pre- or post-feed-mix conditions, one should look towards the smaller, thriftier, landraces such as icelandics (which were developed under such conditions), towards older more self-reliant, active breeds like the Hamburgs, or similarly towards something more like the various game fowl.

You wouldn't get giant roasting carcasses or buckets of eggs, mind, but you would have a source quality food that required almost no input in feed or labor, so that your net returns might actually be greater, provided the more modest gross yields were acceptable to you. It's all about context. Basically, it's a whole different way to look at farming (but one that is historically very normal). Historical and modern landrace-style farming (99.9% or more of agrarian history) focuses on producing stable yields of food over time, in real-life variable conditions, with low inputs--and thus each unique farming region, everywhere in the world, had (or sometimes still has) it's own unique, locally adapted landraces. Conventional modern farming focuses on maximum yields under optimized conditions--and so naturally, by design, doesn't work well under low-input or harsh conditions. This basic principle applies equally to chickens, cows, corn, squash, or anything else.

 

[Davaroo]

Also, someone may have alluded to this already, but I'd like to emphasize that genetics make a big difference. To expect chickens to survive and do relatively well under free-ranging, hardscrabble, low-input, pre- or post-feed-mix conditions, one should look towards the smaller, thriftier, landraces such as icelandics (which were developed under such conditions), towards older more self-reliant, active breeds like the Hamburgs, or similarly towards something more like the various game fowl.

You wouldn't get giant roasting carcasses or buckets of eggs, mind, but you would have a source quality food that required almost no input in feed or labor, so that your net returns might actually be greater, provided the more modest gross yields were acceptable to you. It's all about context. Basically, it's a whole different way to look at farming (but one that is historically very normal). Historical and modern landrace-style farming (99.9% or more of agrarian history) focuses on producing stable yields of food over time, in real-life variable conditions, with low inputs--and thus each unique farming region, everywhere in the world, had (or sometimes still has) it's own unique, locally adapted landraces. Conventional modern farming focuses on maximum yields under optimized conditions--and so naturally, by design, doesn't work well under low-input or harsh conditions. This basic principle applies equally to chickens, cows, corn, squash, or anything else.

Thats right - you gotta feed em if you want em to prosper!

 

[triplepurpose]

Thats right - you gotta feed em if you want em to prosper!

Well, ok, but that wasn't my point at all...

They can "prosper" on whatever they are GENETICALLY ADAPTED to prosper on. Nature is infinitely adaptable, flexible and fecund, if allowed to do its thing--yes, even "prosperous," I would say. Landrace chickens "prospered" just fine (or better?) for thousands of years before commercial interests made possible by the sudden exploitation of cheap fossil fuels took it upon themselves to decide for everyone that such simple models of humble prosperity through biological efficiency just weren't "good enough" for us anymore and we needed to all, for example, start buying lots of feed to grow more chickens and eggs to sell to make the money to buy more feed for bigger, fatter chickens that laid more eggs and required more feed and upkeep and more intensive care to "prosper."

I might add that the value of things--even cash itself, but especially ideas like "profit" and "prosperity"--is highly subjective and very relative...

But anyway, this thread is about "what people fed chickens before there was a feed store." And my previous post pretty much sums up my perspective on this. I think it's useful, but only to a limited degree, to discuss only the feed, without looking at the nature of the chickens themselves that were eating it...

Looking at a modern chicken and deciding it wouldn't do well without modern feed is kind of like those bogus "tests" where people take two of some special new high-yield hybrid tomato plants, stick them both in the same poor soil, spray and fertilize only one of them, and then claim that "organic farming doesn't work" because the other plant didn't do as well. Not spraying pesticides and using chemical fertilizers are only one small aspect of what organic farming is about, just as feeding less commercial feed is only one small aspect of all that landrace husbandry encompasses. I don't know how to make it any clearer than that...

 

[Davaroo]

Well, ok, but that wasn't my point at all...

They can "prosper" on whatever they are GENETICALLY ADAPTED to prosper on. Nature is infinitely adaptable, flexible and fecund, if allowed to do its thing--yes, even "prosperous," I would say. Landrace chickens "prospered" just fine (or better?) for thousands of years before commercial interests made possible by the sudden exploitation of cheap fossil fuels took it upon themselves to decide for everyone that such simple models of humble prosperity through biological efficiency just weren't "good enough" for us anymore and we needed to all, for example, start buying lots of feed to grow more chickens and eggs to sell to make the money to buy more feed for bigger, fatter chickens that laid more eggs and required more feed and upkeep and more intensive care to "prosper."

I might add that the value of things--even cash itself, but especially ideas like "profit" and "prosperity"--is highly subjective and very relative...

But anyway, this thread is about "what people fed chickens before there was a feed store." And my previous post pretty much sums up my perspective on this. I think it's useful, but only to a limited degree, to discuss only the feed, without looking at the nature of the chickens themselves that were eating it...

Looking at a modern chicken and deciding it wouldn't do well without modern feed is kind of like those bogus "tests" where people take two of some special new high-yield hybrid tomato plants, stick them both in the same poor soil, spray and fertilize only one of them, and then claim that "organic farming doesn't work" because the other plant didn't do as well. Not spraying pesticides and using chemical fertilizers are only one small aspect of what organic farming is about, just as feeding less commercial feed is only one small aspect of all that landrace husbandry encompasses. I don't know how to make it any clearer than that...

I like to keep it simple. Feed the things from time to time, do whatever else you can and.... cornbread 'aint too bad.
.
That's how it was arranged not too long ago. It was well known that chickens can get along on all sorts of things, as you suggest. They will make do and adapt and for many centuries we let them do just that. Meanwhile we took what we could from them

But it was learned along the way that it was just so much more satisfying to see them get bigger and do more for a little extra care. Toss in some breeding effort and some control and by golly, things worked out even better. This started back in the 1800's in this country, but it had been going on much longer. The Egyptians, Romans, Chinese and the Rajas of India all were poultry fanciers, well before the petroleum barons showed up to rape the modern world. Eventually, science did get in the game and the gates were opened.... but it was actually late to the party.

Sure, we can let any chicken run amok and revert back to it's "natural," adaptive state. At the same time, it's not wrong to give them a little something extra so they can fatten and prosper on our behalf. It's an investment, really, that we make in them.