SC - Chicken Feed

[harper at idt.net]

Here are the highlights of what Herrera has to say about feeding 
hens.  I've put an ellipsis (...) wherever I omitted text.

Work on Agriculture
Gabriel Alonso de Herrera, 1513

                                                                          
Chapter XIX

Of the food that hens must have, in order to make them good egg-layers

Whatever food is given to the hens, you must always keep in mind the 
advice that you feed them frequently and each time a little rather than the 
contrary, because very often if you give it to them in that way they are 
eager and eat everything and waste nothing; and often if you give them 
a lot to eat and they are very hungry they fill their crops and often 
cannot digest it well and die of it, especially the chicks, if you don’t run 
to them with some remedy; and even though the hens are of such a 
nature that they will eat it all, not everything is entirely beneficial for 
them, for with one food they will fatten a great deal, with another they 
will lay many eggs, and with others they will cease to lay; and if they are 
used to eating grape husks or grapes, little by little they will stop laying 
and will lay smaller eggs until they come to the point of laying none and 
cease completely; and because of this you should take counsel that 
those who indulge a great deal in wine engender fewer children and 
those are more diminished and smaller than [the children] of those who 
drink wine temperately, or only water, and I treat of this at greater length 
in the second book on the properties of wine; and because the grape 
husks take away the egg-laying, they help to fatten the birds, because all 
that force and substance that they had been putting into the eggs is 
converted into fat, but for fattening the grape husks must be just a few 
within the wheat or other foods, that is, the grains; and because for the 
most part hens stop laying in the winter and especially in the coldest and 
most severe weather, take counsel that they should be in a dry, hot 
place, and being there they will benefit by what they eat, and the winter 
foods should be hot.   Everyone says that if you give them boiled barley 
to eat which is a little bit hot, they will give many eggs, and larger ones, 
but this food and sustenance should be in the morning, and little of it, 
and it creates a lot of bile in the hens and makes them ill, but if it is given 
to them in this manner, it will not do them any harm, and with it they will 
lay many eggs, and even if it is very cold they will not stop laying, or at 
least more than in the other manner; cook a little barley in very clean 
water, first having well cleaned it of all dust and dirt, and pour out that 
water in which they were cooked and have another pan or cauldron with 
good clean water and cast in a little lavender to cook with it; make bran, 
and within the barley heated in this way, and give it to them in the 
morning because it warms them, and the lavender or “alhucema” (which 
are the same, although they are different names) have this property, that 
they make the hens lay a lot, but to warm them you have to give it to 
them in the winter, and when it is cold in the daytime, give them wheat, or 
millet, panic-grass.  In the summer, it is good for them to have uncooked 
barley, between grass and leaves, if they don’t have somewhere to graze, 
but in that way the hens stop laying in the great heat of summer as in the 
cold of winter, although not as much, and because of that it is good to 
give them green flowers (?? rosas verdes) in the daytime, and where 
there are a lot of melons, splitting them and setting them out, they will eat 
very well and those are very good, but not cucumbers, which are very 
cold and dangerous, and if the hens have space and a field where they 
can graze, feed them twice a day, once in the morning, again two hours 
before they go to sleep, and if they don’t have space or grass to graze, 
let it be three times: in the morning, at midday, and in the afternoon, and 
where there are many of them, and a large field, so that they go far, 
gather them near with a little bell, and in the winter cast some feed among 
the excrement so that they scratch at it and wallow in searching for it, 
and in the summer, amongst dust, for these things will make them bright 
and healthy and clean of lice...

I could say much more about the feeding of hens, but I will briefly say 
this before I proceed to speak of how to fatten them: they should not eat 
eggshells, because they will go on to eating eggs.
In Rome, in the winter they give them dry bran to eat in some baskets, 
and on top they put some large stones so that they don’t scratch at 
them, and this is good sustenance for the winter.


Chapter XXIII

On fattening hens


...but to fatten the birds, three things are first required: a place that is hot, 
narrow, and dark; because space, coolness, and brightness are contrary 
things to fattening, and it is not necessary to speak of the causes, 
because it suffices for our work to know the consequences in order to 
fatten them; there are many ways.
One is to give them balls of dough of barley flour, and some flax seed 
mixed with it.  Another is to give them cooked rye, as I said above, from 
the husks that they make so that the hens don’t lay; rye has the same, 
and because of this it fattens them, and because in the winter they don’t 
lay eggs, therefore they fatten more; but not all hens are good for 
fattening; Pliny says that for fattening, the ones with thick flesh on the 
neck are best, and he also says that if you feed them with sops in milk – 
and this can be done when there are abundant flocks or for great lords – 
that this makes them very tender and very tasty.

Columela says to fatten them a lot and very quickly, is done in this way: 
let the place be hot and dark, as I have said, and take as many wicker 
baskets as you have birds you want to fatten, and in each place a hen or 
capon, and let it have two holes, one for the head and another so that it 
can cast out excrement...

Give them balls of flour or rye to eat, and the first days give them little by 
little, and don’t give them one to eat until they have digested the other... 
give them a little to drink or soak the balls in a little water when you give 
them... if you give them sops in wine they will fatten well and become 
very tender, especially if you give them balls kneaded with it, and if 
being so confined they don’t want to eat well, loosen them a little and 
change their food, giving them some wheat until they are appeased and 
return to eating the first food...

The Moors, in Granada, fatten them with dough of panic-grass, so than 
in fifteen days they become so fat that they almost have no lean [flesh], 
in this manner: they have some large cages where they have thirty or 
forty birds in each one, and of each five or six, one is empty, and they 
take out each bird by itself and stuff them with balls of millet flour until 
they fill up the crop, and a little water afterwards, and one by one they do 
this and pass them into the empty cage...



Lady Brighid ni Chiarain
Settmour Swamp, East (NJ)
mka Robin Carroll-Mann
harper at idt.net