SC - period chicken feed

[LrdRas at aol.com]

In a message dated 12/18/99 7:30:05 PM Eastern Standard Time, 
stefan at texas.net writes:

<< ou can't assume these were their regular diets.
  >>

And you cannot assume they were not regular diets. You have not yet clearly 
indicated why you assume they were not fed grains other than a vague 
reference to 'grain wastage' which was based on an erroneous idea of a modern 
chickens diet and most certainly was not based on any real concept of animal 
feeding either in the modern world or pre-industrial revolution. Your second 
suggestion somehow intertwined the domestication of horses in some dim time 
of the past which was outside any time period that could be remotely 
connected to medieval agricultural practices.

I would very much like to see any one on this list maintain the flocks of 
chickens capable of producing the thousands of eggs used in a medieval feast 
without the use of modern feed lot methods let alone without the use of 
supplemental grain feeding. To do so in a medieval setting without the 
knowledge of modern scientific feeding methods in a free range situation 
without the use of grain supplements would be impossible. 

Common sense seems to be the overriding factor in determining the answer to 
what they fed the chickens. Common sense demands that well fed animals be 
maintained or their domestication and breeding becomes useless and 
burdensome. If your assumption that grain was more important than the animals 
it nourished is accurate then there is no reason for animals to have been 
kept at all. 

I have great respect for your quest for knowledge but am oftentimes amazed at 
your apparent inability to grasp exactly what the phrase 'agricultural 
society' means. This was the way of life of the vast majority of people in 
the middle ages and the reason for the existence of the small number of 
people supplying support services. It was not a secondary concern as it seems 
to have become in today's world. A handful of grain thrown by the peasant 
matron to her chickens assured the eggs laid tomorrow. Eggs which were far 
more valuable than the grain used to produce them. 

Ras
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