Re: costs of feed !

A_ L _P wrote:

Restrictions on the use of table and restaurant scraps must have made
a difference to the nutrients available, compared with the "old days"
when chooks were like compost heaps - you put your spare edibles into
the chooks and got eggs & chicken meat.

Yes and no
One has to be wary about comparing apples and pears.

In the "old days" commercial compound feed was already available for the big units, I have adverts for it in 1920's manuals. And then they added more fishmeal and meat meal and bone meal and limestone and iodine and phosferine - and all manner of additives !!! <grin> these old books are wonderful.
In the "old days" in the domestic situation all the waste was boiled up with lots of meat and other protein. There was little surplus carbs like we have now. They were needed to fill human bellies up !!
In the "old days" in the domestic situation one was not looking at birds who were as productive if they were scratching around the yard. But if they cost little to feed then the quality of the protein was well worth it.
In the "old days" chicken as a meat was a relative rarity - not something that was eaten several times a week.


Even so my parents had a tin of "meat meal" which got added to the
feed sometimes. Don't ask me when or why: that was of no interest to
me at the time.

It was great stuff.


I'd be surprised if many chooks, household chooks anyway, lived on
grain.

Indeed, the scattering of the grain was a supplement, as it should be.

They were like the pig, low-cost producers converting unwanted
stuff to valuable food. Well, that's what I knew in New Zealand when
I was growing up. Things have changed a lot since then. Battery
farming for instance. May the gods rot those who profit from it,
starting at the toenails & dandruff and working steadily till the rot
meets in the middle.

<grin>
Battery farming has been around for over 150 years.
And its not the producers fault that the human population has increased so much with the associated demand for food.
Battery farming is not the fault of those who run them, its the fault of the humans who demand the food they produce.
Maybe Bird flu will be the chickens revenge !! reduce the human population to a level whereby we do have sufficient land and stockmen to be able to put outside the birds we need to support the numbers of humans that are left.

;@)


--
regards
Jill Bowis

Domestic Poultry and Waterfowl Solutions
Herbaceous; Herb and Alpine Nursery
Seasonal Farm Food
http://www.kintaline.co.uk

.

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