Heritage Feeds for Heritage Breeds

[Farmerboy16]

That is what I feel about cattle, grass fed only, but my dad want our steer calves to be fed corn to gain weight a bit faster. When I find and buy a dairy cow, (which is not going to be anytime soon) I will give her a very large pasture, and just hay and roughage in the winter.

 

[Jake Levi]

The weight they are gaining faster is fat, not muscle. To grow faster feed high protein feed, like alfalfa hay. Corn is fat to make them fat.

 

[missbecky]

I highly recommend "Harvey Uuserys" book -which was recommended to me to answer a lot of your questions. It really helped me make a lot of descisions with my flock, and ways to utilize everything full circle -from hen house to garden.

When I was younger we lived in Kalispell, Montana, and lived off the land. We did not go to feed stores to buy poultry food. Our chickens were very healthy. They ate everything! Table scraps, cooked rice, grains, greens, etc. They foraged through cow poop, alfalpha, spillage, and even ate maggots from a carcass in the bone yard. You can feed them their own crushed egg shells for calcium. Maybe even crushed ones from a stew. Fruits, vegetables & vegetable scraps, corn cobs, fish scraps, wild plants/seed, etc... Just like people eat what they can to survive the birds ate their share of whatever was left over, or in abundance. They are amazingly hearty animals.

It seems to me that we have become so reliant on modern day commercialism that we have lost sight of the simplicity of what was once typical techniques of mainstream survival.

Look at these little birds that live in the wild, and survive just fine -what do they eat?

Good luck with your research, and good for you for getting back to the basics.

 

[Chris09]

I highly recommend "Harvey Uuserys" book -which was recommended to me to answer a lot of your questions. It really helped me make a lot of descisions with my flock, and ways to utilize everything full circle -from hen house to garden.

When I was younger we lived in Kalispell, Montana, and lived off the land. We did not go to feed stores to buy poultry food. Our chickens were very healthy. They ate everything! Table scraps, cooked rice, grains, greens, etc. They foraged through cow poop, alfalpha, spillage, and even ate maggots from a carcass in the bone yard. You can feed them their own crushed egg shells for calcium. Maybe even crushed ones from a stew. Fruits, vegetables & vegetable scraps, corn cobs, fish scraps, wild plants/seed, etc... Just like people eat what they can to survive the birds ate their share of whatever was left over, or in abundance. They are amazingly hearty animals.

It seems to me that we have become so reliant on modern day commercialism that we have lost sight of the simplicity of what was once typical techniques of mainstream survival.

Look at these little birds that live in the wild, and survive just fine -what do they eat?

Good luck with your research, and good for you for getting back to the basics.

The big problem is that the chicken today are much different than the chickens back them.
I would be willing to bet that you didn't 360 +/- a year from one hen back then.

You get what you put in them, if you feed them poorly you will get poor egg production.
If you want nice health birds that produce and reproduce you have to feed them right.

 

[Rhinoman]

(I also posted this in the fermented feed thread but don't know how to post a link so I just copied and pasted my post. )

A cautionary tale:

Before I begin I want to start by saying I am not condemning fermented feed or anyone's feeding practices, I'm just relaying my experience.

I want to breed Heritage chickens and I want feed my chickens the best food possible. I came across the thread on fermented feed. I figured the most natural food possible was also best so I bought grains and fish meal and we mixed our own food and fermented it. Here's the mix we were using recipe: 32oz ea: cracked corn, rolled oats, steamed barley, wheat germ, alfalfa pellets; 6oz ea boss, fish meal. We adjust the amount but use the same ratio.

Egg production was very poor this winter from our mixed flock (horrible predation ended our plans to breed Heritage chickens for the year and I’m not going to attempt to breed again until we have large protected enclosures built, [we had free ranged the year before with only two losses, but not last year, there was one day we lost six chickens!). Weeks that went by this winter were we didn’t get any eggs, I couldn’t figure out what the problem might be. Still as of the beginning of April no eggs (imagine if I had been trying to breed).

The other day this toothless old man (Pop) came by the house to thank my wife for the cookies we sent to him and his injured wife. Pop told my son the story about the time when his son wanted some chickens: He went to a local guy he knew had some chickens and bought some, the guy he got the chickens from explained to him that he wasn’t going to get any eggs from the chickens; they’re free loaders. The guy showed him how he fed the chickens: this grain mix in a bucket with some water that sits for a while. He said it was the best thing for them even though they’re free loaders and don’t even deserve it! Well, Pop got the chickens anyway cause his boy really wanted some chickens. Not one to fuss with anything and being a practical man, all this fancy food was too much for Pop. Pop wasn’t about to do anything more than he had to for free loading chickens. So he just fed um some chicken food and don’t you know: they started laying eggs like little egg laying machines!

When my son told me the story a 5000w light went off in my head. So I bought some Poulin grain chicken food and guess what? Four days later our chickens started laying again! And now they're laying like little egg laying machines.

The thing is most breeders, even those that breed prize-winning heritage-birds, just use commercial feed.

I don't know what went wrong, too many variables. Maybe my fifteen year old screwed the feed up. I do know that when our breeding program is in full swing there was no way we were going to feed hundreds of chickens fermented feed and to be honest most people that raise chicks are going to use a commercial chicken feed as their primary nutrition.al source.

Again I’m not bashing fermented feed, I’m not bashing whole grains. I’m just saying if you get it wrong…