SC - period poultry feed
Mordonna22 at aol.com
Mordonna22 at aol.com
Sun Dec 19 07:17:11 PST 1999
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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