SC - period poultry feed

[LrdRas@aol.com]

Ras replies to me:
> stefan at texas.net writes:
> << I just don't think there was a lot of surplus food available to use
>  on chickens. >>
> 
> I think you are forgetting that chickens are omnivorous and really are not
> difficult to feed. They eat most anything including vegetable scraps, meat
> scraps, stale and old bread as well as grain. Our chickens were very much
> free range but their diet was always supplemented with kitchen scraps and a
> handful or two of grain. The ratio of marketable body weight to grain fed is
> remarkably high when applied to poultry as opposed to pigs or beef.

I see this as supporting my contention that period chickens were not 
grain-fed animals not refuting it.

Why use grain that can be used to support humans when you can let
the chicken turn these otherwise unusable or less desired items into
chicken meat or eggs.

Pigs or beef were not fed on grain in period either. Part of their value
was that they could turn otherwise non-useful items into useful meat.
Acorns and grass for instance.

While I did say "food" in the above segment you quoted, the original
messages and the portion of the message you did not quote were talking
about grains specifically.

- -- 
Lord Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
Mark S. Harris             Austin, Texas           stefan at texas.net
**** See Stefan's Florilegium files at:  http://www.florilegium.org ****
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