what did they feed "in the olden days"?

[kefiren]

So, before fish meal, before "BIG CORN" and "BIG SOY"...
WHAT DID THEY FEED CHICKENS?
I'm sure it was simpler. Like a mix of oats and legumes sprinkled on the ground
Kitchen scraps and leftovers and egg shells
Gravel and Worms and grass that they found themselves.

 

[wyoDreamer]

The chickens were my aunts chore when she was growing up, she would go out first thing in the morning and feed them a small scoop of horse grains (scratch). Then let them out of the coop to free-range when she left for school. Gather eggs after school and give them a small scoop of grains in the evening to bring them back to the coop to be locked in for the night.
The chickens spent a good part of their day in the horse pen & pasture picking through the horse apples.

 

[Folly's place]

Her chickens were likely smaller, and produced many fewer eggs each year, and had a much richer 'free range' environment. Bigger higher producing birds won't do so well, and few of us have the plant and animal diversity available then.
Mary

 

[wyoDreamer]

I just talked to her and she would give a scoop of horse grains only because it distracted the rooster so she could gather the morning eggs without being attacked. She used to carry a stick to protect herself from that rooster. Day he was butchered is still in her memory and he was the best chicken soup she ever ate, lol!

 

[so lucky]

Speaking of feeding dogs back then, I remember my grandma (probably in the late 1950s) making huge pans of cornbread and pouring bacon grease over it, to feed to the hunting dogs that Grandpa had. A lot of cheap dog food is mostly corn today, so I guess she wasn't too far off the mark.

 

[Folly's place]

Also called 'road apples'.

 

[Fishkeeper]

A less than ideal diet, which would have killed them if free-ranging hadn't been available, I'd imagine. Just like how people used to feed dogs table scraps and raw meat and whatever happened to be available, and how that wasn't very good dog food.
"Simple" is not necessarily good. Feeding a rabbit nothing but lettuce would be simple, but would kill that rabbit pretty quickly. The reason there are so many ingredients in chicken feed is because chickens NEED many ingredients.

 

[so lucky]

Why would anyone feed a chicken? They are perfectly capable of fending for themselves. Or at least they once were. Some still are.

Probably 75 years ago when people with chickens lived on farms, and the yard wasn't mowed to within an inch of its life, and pesticides weren't used on crops and lawn, chickens might have been able to fend for them selves. I know there are feral chickens in some places. but they would starve to death in our sterile lifeless modern lawns.

 

[varidgerunner]

Historically, predator losses weren't a big concern. They were hunted for meat and skins, no firearms ordinances, no protected species, varmint populations were kept in check. The type of chickens raised influences predator losses as well. Had a possum try to get a six week old chick the other night. Chick got away, was perched high in a tree outside the open pen, cheaping loudly. Possum was balled up in a corner drooling on himself, while mom and dad were giving a beatdown to anything that moved in the darkness. Commercial birds would have just laid down and pretended to be chicken tenders.

 

[Uff Da]

I raise Icelandics. One of the local terms for them is "pile chickens," because they survived off of the compost and manure piles. There were several feral populations in existence when the Icelandic government collected them for conservation. The difference in feeding behavior between the Icelandics and other breeds I occasionally have side by side with them is extreme--the Icelandics basically ignore the contents of the feeders and spend their time scratching around. The other chickens prefer the feed provided. However, I've successfully free-ranged/scrap-fed modern production types, too. Right now I have a red sex-link that is giving me an egg per day on that sort of system, and her eggs are lovely and she is blooming with health.