I am new to homesteading, and right now we only have a rabbit with 7 or 8 week-old bunnies. I plan to get chickens next; we also want a Jersey cow or two and possibly a pig. What I'd like to know is, back in the days before feed stores, what did people grow to feed these animals and how did they harvest/store it and in what quantities was it fed? And where do you get the seed to plant it? I do not want hybrid seed; the idea here is to be as cost-effective as possible. Thanx:o)

-- Cathy N. (keeper8@attcanada.ca), May 26, 2001

Answers

Before horsedraw reapers and threshers, most stock was pastured in the summer and given root crops in the winter. Grain was seldom used for animal feed, but some was given for working stock.

Large and high-yielding versions of turnips, beets, carrots and other such crops are becoming rare. I bought some mangle seed (mangles are stock beets that get up to 20lbs each) from www.rareseeds.com They are a good company to deal with. I do not know of a source for stock carrots, but I'm fairly certain that they used to have strains that grew much larger than table carrots. Somebody told me that they simply let the same type of carrot grow longer. Turnips and rutabagas (aka sweeds or Swweedish turnips) both have huge yeilds when grown by the acre. Somewhere not long ago I read that a dairy cow could do well for the winter on a half acre's worth of sweeds, but that was in the days when dairy yields were lower too.

Pumpkins and other winter squash were also common feedstuffs. Conneticut field pumpkins are used for jack o lanterns now, but they come from a fodder history.

Since root crops are not used for stock feed anymore, any seed you find will be open-pollenated. You might find hybrid turnips and carrots, but both are a pain to collect seed from anyhow. In most of the USA, wild carrots are so prevelant that it's hard to keep the seeds from hybridizing with the wild strains.

The only advantage of going with open pollenated seeds (non-hybrid) is if you are going to save your seeds for the next crop. Seed bought in bulk is cheap and rarely worth the labor and risks, unless you want to (and know how to) develope your own strain suited for your land. If a hybrid yields more per acre, or more per hour's work, saving a few bucks on seed is false ecconomy.

Grain is much easier to feed. The roots must be cut up for some stock.

Most of the above is for large stock--cows and pigs etc. Rabbits can do well on good hay and some grain. They will treat root crops as treats, but I seem to recall they don't work well as the main feed for rabbits. Chickens will eat the root crops, but some extra grain would be helpful. Home grown grain need not be limited to corn wheat, oats and barley. Grain sorghums, millets and a few other less common grains might be easier to harvest by hand. One millet head is a lot easier to cut off than the same amount of wheat. rareseeds.com has syrup sorghum, it should do well for grain too--and the stocks make good fodder. Several seed companies carry broom corn which is really a type of millet.

Don't take my word on any of this, but it should give you some things to look into. I'm just starting out myself. My sorghum and millet got burnt out by the drought last year, and this is the first year I've tried mangles. So most of the stuff I've mentioned is from what I've read.

==>paul

-- paul (p@ledgewood-consulting.com), May 26, 2001.

... and hay - never forget hay. Used to be cereal hay (oats, normally, but sometimes wheaten hay) - cut full-grown but green, with the grain at the "milky" stage, with sweet juice rather than starch - meant the goodness was still all through the plant, rather than being concentrated into just the grain. Also pasture hay, also near to "haying off" naturally, but just short of it. Cereal hay is a good idea, because you grow a crop, then cut a swathe all around it for hay, leaving a fire-break.

-- Don Armstrong (darmst@yahoo.com.au), May 27, 2001.

The worst mouse problem we ever had was the year we fed oat hay cut when the grain was in the milk stage. Every bale was riddled with tunnels. The stock loved it until the hay got too full of urine and fecal matter. Then it even smelled terrible. And it took a year or so and some very busy barn cats to reduce the mouse population to normal levels.

-- marilyn (rainbow@ktis.net), May 27, 2001.

If you can find it, Small Scale Grain Raising written by Gene Logsdon has some very good information about growing feed for livestock.

-- S Baylous (sbaylous@aol.com), November 21, 2001.