Apparently, it's good fodder for cows etc, though I don't know that chickens would eat it... You can always try.

Sorry to hear you lost some chickens DomusAlbion In my case, it feels like I'm constructing a fortress! I've previously lost ducks to a fox. Terrible thing about foxes, is that they kill every bird they see, then eat them one at a time.

Yesterday the 50 lb. bag of layer pellets I purchased was $12.50. Two weeks ago it was $10.75. Over the winter it was ~6.80.

During the summer I give very little grain but they also have access to an area where other animals waste grain and hay. The birds do fine eating the leaves and spilled grain. I am moving toward a type of free range... a hybrid system if you like.

Before we moved from the old farmstead to our new home on 20 acres we free ranged all our birds... BUT we also fed them vegy scraps and peals etc so that they would continue to think of us as food.

Yard birds are a delight to own as well as a necessary food source for white meat. You should have stories to tell in a few years that will have non rural people scratching their heads in dis belief..

Just as we do...LOL Ask my wife about her favorite hen and she will regale you for hours about Henrietta the banti hen who was our main brood hen for years.. That hen would come into the house each day in time to sit on the living room floor and watch her favorite soap opera ( I am not kidding).

As to free ranging replacing all feed if you have salt out for the horses and mules, and oyster shell or baked egg shell available to them, they can of course fend for themselves in our part of the country.

I sold our buggy and all the live stock when we moved, but I still have my horse drawn farming equipment and remember well how to use it...LOL I have a chicken house and a small shed to convert to a stall, but have not put in fences even though we have built several houses on the property for children and their families...

We have a pig pen we use to raise wild hogs that are available in the woods localy...

I have two year around springs, and about 1/3 of the orchards planted... I am hoping to add to the orchards this fall.

Possibly we will go back to owning horses, but in reality I don't think planning to survive is where I wish to put my efforts... at my age personal survival is less important than trying to preserve our country in some state allowing liberty to me..

I find that winter squash and cabbage seem to have a good effect on egg production and chicken well-being, and they store fairly well in the unheated chicken coop, in plastic pails and barrels by the cans of chicken feed. We have Black Australorps (sp?) chosen because they can take cold weather and are big enough to have a good amount of meat on them. And they do well scrounging around the place. We do fence them out of the garden, or mostly fence them into a chicken yard when the garden is going, because they will peck at anything red, it seems, especially strawberries and tomatoes, and will scratch out seedling plants and small transplants, too. So we have a fenced area by the chicken coop, and also portable coop and fence in the orchard, and they are confined in those areas for much of the summer.

How do you use the squash/cabbage? A weekly supplement or part of a daily ration?

I picked up some cheap pumpkins after halloween as a snack and we use our food scraps (which include squash scraps) but I could extend production next year to have some for the chooks.

cornish X broilers should be fed 12 hours on 12 hours off after they feather out. otherwise they have heartattacks and die. My folks run pastured broilers similar to Joel Salatin's setup.