Re: Laying feed, was re: HELP !!

a_l_p wrote:
Jill wrote:
cheree wrote:


My chickens free range, and get much of their food that

way, but in addition to the 15-acres with abundant plant life, I
throw them kitchen scraps, AND supplement their food with a good
laying feed.


Actually its the laying feed that gives them their nutrition for
production, and the rest of it is the supplement.



What is it in the laying feed that is important?

Quality accessible protein.
Balanced vits mins and trace elements.

It's a relatively
new invention (compared with the keeping of domestic chooks)

Not really - and it has been developed alongside and inextricably linked to
the breeding of productive birds.
Previous to 50 odd years ago much more meat was fed in rations and as
scraps.
Food safety advice has persuaded the powers that be that this is not a good
idea. The meat that "we" eat is far more dangerous to birds than it was, now
most of it comes from some sort of intensive unit. "We" eat more chicken
than we used to.

so at
some time someone must have worked out what the vital egg-producing
substances were, within their normal diet which would have been kitchen
scraps, grain and
whatever they found around the property. Were there more flies,
maggots, mice i.e. protein than in today's ultra-free range
scratchings?

If you look at the old books -- 1800's and early 1900's the science of
feeding was already well known within the confines of understanding the
individual elements. Many of the mechanisms of the particular roles each
arae of our nutrition were not fully explained until the early 1900's. But
trying to put a scientific angle on how to get better birds, better breeding
and better production exercised the minds of many a poultry keeper and
chemist for generations before that.
Meat and bone meal was a VERY common "tonic" from very early on even when
the route by which it worked was not understood


I suppose in earlier days the fowls were kept for meat as well as
eggs

The two types of breeding were quite different.

and were left to sit on eggs when they felt like it

Not for productive birds -- they had broody lines of, usually bantam crosses
in lines and lines of bottomless arks to put the eggs beneath.

so a new
bunch of chicks was always coming along, and when a hen stopped
laying she became dinner rather than being a non-functioning
productive unit. Breeds selected for maximum feed-conversion into
eggs, must have required more predictable composition of their food
intake. That's very clumsily put, hope you know what I mean.

Yup -- but I think you may not realise how long the "improving" of
livestock, feeding and productivity has been going on.
The Victorians were probably the most active but agricultural improvements
started way back in the 1600's and 1700's.
As each bit of knowledge of science became common knowledge it was applied
to a myriad environments.


--

regards
Jill Bowis [fascinated by old techniques, how knowledge was gained and
then used way back when]

Pure bred utility chickens and ducks
Housing; Equipment, Books, Videos, Gifts
Herbaceous; Herb and Alpine nursery
Working Holidays in Scotland
http://www.kintaline.co.uk


.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Authoritarian regimes often fear ideological contamination by tourism, but theres little eviden
    ... independent farmers is the only way to stimulate food production in Cuba. ... A Stalinist moron in Canada overtaken even by the Stalinist in Cuba. ... agriculture, Raul called for "structural and conceptual" change. ...
    (soc.culture.cuba)
  • How to make the food crisis worse
    ... How to make the food crisis worse ... or lead to higher production in the long term. ... In the space of a few days, the Philippines declared that it would aim ... a goal of creating a rice cartel consisting of Thailand and Vietnam, ...
    (soc.culture.cambodia)
  • Re: The Coming Greater Depression
    ... The energy inputs for industrial farming are enormous. ... Without surplus energy, food ... And, on the other peak oil thread, crude + condensates still has a May ... The total production figures include tarsands which are ...
    (rec.martial-arts)
  • More on zanupf farming and their bumper harvests of .....
    ... Food production: another recipe for disaster in the making ... What the government says and wants to achieve and what it eventually ... stimulate production without the necessary inputs remains questionable. ... deliberate shift to support people who declared, upon offer of A2 farms, ...
    (soc.culture.zimbabwe)
  • Biofuel zealots repeating Chairman Maos biggest mistake, with starvation the result!
    ... missed about the world food crisis is that rising oil prices have not ... mandating a shift of agricultural resources to biofuel production. ... communes and greater industrial output at the expense of agriculture. ...
    (uk.business.agriculture)