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.
