What did our grandmother's feed their chickens 100 years ago?

[ToniBuzzard]

My Grandma culled her entire flock every two or three years and started over with one day old chicks. Never did understand this, as I have a nine year old Rhode Island Red that still lays perfect eggs every other day. She hasn't missed a beat, short of when she molts.

 

[ncgnance]

Quote:
That's because back then they killed what was getting the chickens. They didn't trap and release, they just ate what was getting the chickens to , if it was edible. When I was a kid, chickens weren't pets, although I did have a pet rooster that I found as a chick in a horse stable. He was a "Dominekker", as we called them. Chickens were allowed to be chickens, and they were stronger for it. The fancy breeds are cute, but give me a Donimnekker or a Java any day.

 

[Oblio13]

In the "good old days", most of a chicken's diet on a small farm was through sheer sloppiness. Large livestock like cows and horses spill a lot of feed, plus their manure attracts bugs. And people tended to cull their home flocks pretty ruthlessly before winter, when food is relatively scarce.

It's still that way in the third world where there's no such thing as layer pellets or chick crumbles. I've traveled in places like Zimbabwe, Haiti, etc., and wondered what people were feeding their chickens. And the answer usually is: Nothing.

 

[ncgnance]

My chickens loved scratching in the cow manure last summer. That's because there are crawlies in there. In the process of getting a meal, my chickens spread out the cow patties real fine, which is what its all about. The manure becomes fertilizer faster, and the cows eat in that spot sooner than they would have. Beautiful, ain't it???

 

[kstaven]

Letting animals be animals and have them take care of work like spreading manure is great!!!

 

[SeaChick]

In the process of getting a meal, my chickens spread out the cow patties real fine, which is what its all about. The manure becomes fertilizer faster, and the cows eat in that spot sooner than they would have. Beautiful, ain't it???

I LOVE this. It IS beautiful. Seeing stuff like that, which makes me smile and feel connected to the earth and nature, makes up for the crappy, stressful, totally artifical hours of errands and beaurocracy and rushing around that take up too much of modern life. Weird, huh? But hearing about or seeing chickens scratching around in cow poop really makes my day.​

 

[Omeletta]

I agree 100% seachick. Why is that? I've often wondered why i think I would be happier with a washboard in my hand, than listening for the blasted buzzer on the frontloading washer.

My Bubba, who passed last December, homesteaded their farm in Northern Alberta. I have a picture of her in coveralls with a gun in one hand and a rabbit for supper in the other. They also fed them nothing. They survived off of scraps and things the other animals dropped. They couldn't afford to feed them...and they weren't meant to live long lives, like the fancy ones in my coop. They were to be useful creatures or they could be supper. Totally different than "What do you feel like eating tonight, honey?"

They didn't live long lives, but they lived useful lives. There isn't alot of room for sentimentality when your survival depends on every animal doing their part.

Tanya

 

[ams3651]

Found this on a website, seems to be like I remember, my grandfather would give all the animals cooked warm oatmeal with molasses in the winter as well...

http://www.plamondon.com/faq_feed.html
"Feeding Chickens
1. Do I have to feed free-range chickens, or can they find their own feed?
Chickens can find their own feed, but each chicken needs a lot of room if this is going to work. Also, chickens that live entirely by foraging have to have their population adjusted to match the feed supply. For example, a farmer of 100 years ago might have kept a dozen hens and a rooster through the winter, and allowed the hens to hatch a brood of chicks each in the spring, giving, say, 72 chicks plus the original 13 chickens, or 85 birds total. The old rooster would be sold after the chicks had hatched. The old hens and most of the young chickens would be sold in the fall, and one cockerel and twelve pullets would be kept through the lean months. By having 85 chickens during the fat months and only 13 during the winter, the amount of supplemental feed needed by the chickens would be minimized. A flock of 13 chickens might survive all winter on the grain spilled by a cow and a team of draft horses, plus some hay and whatever else they could find. This winter diet would be nutritionally poor (both vitamin- and protein-deficient) and the hens would lay no eggs, but they'd recover in early spring and the cycle would repeat.
Nutritional deficiencies increase with the number of chickens. I've heard estimates that you can support 1-2 hens per acre with no supplemental feeding, though probably not during the winter. As you add chickens to the farm, they first exhaust the supply of high-calorie feeds such as seeds, then the supply of high-protein feeds such as bugs, worms, and high-protein forage. Finally, they use up the supply of high-vitamin feeds such as grass. Modern poultrykeeping revolves around supplying the nutrients the chickens can't find for themselves.

In the good old days, when people didn't feed their hens at all, much of the hen's diet was provided by sheer sloppiness. People threw their garbage out into the street or the barnyard. The cows and horses spilled grain. Manure was everywhere and was full of yummy maggots. Even with all the natural bounty provided by Stone Age sanitation, the number of hens that could be supported without supplemental feeding was very limited. Flocks of over fifty hens were unusual before chicken feed was invented.

In practice, though, it always pays to provide a complete diet, compared to feeding nothing at all or supplying nothing but grain. The increased production always pays for the increased feed bill.

There are a few circumstances where the diet can be adjusted to reflect reliable forage ingredients, such as old-fashioned "range rations" which left out the vitamins that were provided in abundance by green feed. But enough dry days in a row browns off the grass and makes it unpalatable to the chickens, so this method has its risks. Also, many of the things hens eat are so tiny that we can't see them -- tiny seeds, tiny bugs, tiny worms. If we can't see them, we can't estimate how much the hens are finding, and we can't know how much supplemental feed they need on a day-by-day basis.

Fortunately for the frugal farmer, hens prefer fresh, natural feeds to dry, processed chicken feed, and will eat natural feeds in preference to store-bought feed whenever they have the chance. "........

 

[kstaven]

I have to agree with the last statement AMS Mine rush out the door in the mornings when the grass is green and ignore what is in their feeders.

 

[silkiechicken]

I agree, I open door, fill feeders, some of the starving young ones who are still being chased away from feeders grab a half dozen bites, and then no chickens are seen in the coop till dusk. Bar the good girls who lay eggs IN the next hutches!