SC - Sweets to the sweet, have some fruitcake...

[James Gilly / Alasdair mac Iain]

In a message dated 12/19/1999 1:50:21 AM US Mountain Standard Time, 
LrdRas at aol.com writes:

<< 
 Regarding the use of hay for cattle. Such a diet would quickly sicken an 
 animal if there were no supplemental grains fed. Certainly we are in 
 agreement that the majority of the food fed to cattle in winter months is 
 dried vegetation. Our disagreement is in the supplemental feeding of 
 relatively small portions of grain.>>

Depends upon the quality of the hay.  A diet of low protein straw would 
starve the poor beasties, however a diet of high protein hay would see them 
easily and healthily through the winter and early spring.  Even today many 
small farmers feed only hay to beef animals through the winter and early 
spring, then turn the animals out to graze on the high protein spring and 
summer grasses without supplemental feeding at all. 
One of the problems I am having with this entire thread is of definitions.  
For instance, when you say "grain" do you mean any ceral grass in any form?  
Or just the far more labor ointensive harvested forms?  Or just the harvested 
and dried grains?  Or just the harvested and dried grains of those grasses 
man has bred into high yeild grasses? 
I too am passionate whenever someone impunes that our forefathers were not 
agriculturally sophisticated.  However, most things DO evolve over time.  
Just because the technology was unavailabe, or the breeds we use were 
unavailable, does not mean in any sense that our ancestors would not have 
known how to deal with it if it were.  
For instance, There was a thread on this list a while back about why milk 
products were far more abundant in the Spring months.  It is my contention 
that the medieval farmers were well aware that milk production increases with 
the high protein spring grasses, thus they most probaly timed the breeding of 
their animals so that they would produce milk drinking progeny when there was 
a higher supply of milk.

<< We are in agreement  about pigs. ;-) The supplemental foods here are  sour 
 milk, whey and kitchen scraps and, according to court records, the 
occasional 
 snatched medieval child. :-) The use of grain for hog feeding  is highly 
 unlikely. >>


Well, the problem with placing pigs in the same category with most other meat 
producing farm animals is that pigs and their cousins are omnivorous to a 
much higher extent than most grazing animals.  I doubt if a diet high in 
animal protein (milk or flesh) could be digested by grazers, however swine 
can and do digest animal protein quite well.  So do most barnyard fowl, to a 
slightly lesser extent.


Mordonna the Cook,
SunDragon's Western Reaches
Atenveldt
(m.k.a. Buckeye, AZ
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