I wish I had talked to my grandparents more before they passed away, but I was actually pretty young. I was in high school when my great grandmother, who was like my grandmother, as she had raised my dad, passed away. I have wonderful memories of her. She was part Cherokee and taught me a kind of Christianity that I don’t see much of today. She taught me to be kind to everyone–no exceptions, to turn the other cheek, to help those who might have less, and to never judge others. She also taught me about chickens.
I wish I had a photo somewhere of her chicken coop that was in the back of an old garage. I can’t remember the outside very well, but there were strawberries and blackberries around the outside of the chicken run (I definitely remember those), and I remember the inside of the coop. It was kind of dark, without windows, and being in Texas, I guess there wasn’t a huge need for protection from the cold. It was a much “looser” structure than the coop we have now. I remember the nest boxes. I remember helping her collect eggs and being a little bit afraid of those hens pecking my arm. I remember her telling me not to look outside when she had to go get a chicken for dinner. And I remember helping her feed her chickens.
My great grandmother, Bertha (One of Poe’s grand babies is named Bertha in her honor), had lived through the Great Depression. She told me stories about growing and canning food and how she used to make clothes out of flour sacks (I later learned that the flour companies started using pretty fabrics for the flour sacks when they learned people were making dresses from them). She told me about surviving, and all of my memories of her are related to the habits she must have learned surviving the Depression. She kept a garden. She canned food. She made everything from scratch–from potato chips to syrup (no lovely Maple trees to tap in Texas). She made her clothes, and she worked non-stop even in her older age. Even when she was watching her “stories” on the little black and white television in her living room, she crocheted blankets and tablecloths.
One of my best memories of her was feeding the scraps after meals to the chickens. It was way more fun than collecting eggs, and I was so thankful to those chickens. I was a VERY picky eater when I was a kid (autism and all), and though my granny begged me to eat all of my meals, all I really wanted to eat was her homemade jam on her homemade bread. I was so thankful to the chickens for eating my carrots. Maybe that’s when I fell in love with chickens. I just didn’t know it at the time. My great grandmother’s chickens were fed with table scraps and grains. She didn’t use chicken feed, though it had been developed by the time I was a kid in the 80s.
I have been thinking more and more about my great grandmother as I try to figure out a million worst-case scenarios in my mind for what the future holds. My jobs are no longer stable, so Ron and I have been doing our best be as frugal as we can be, stock up where we can, and figure out how to live even more self sufficiently. It has occurred to me: What if we couldn’t afford organic chicken feed?
Using my great grandmother as inspiration, I researched to find out how people fed their chickens during hard times like the Great Depression and in the times before chicken feed was a thing. Below is a list of the things I have learned. I hope they are helpful to you, and I hope none of us need them.
Table Scraps
Right now, we use table scraps to supplement our chickens’ diet. It is a great way to save money on feed and avoid food waste. Plus, the variety is great for the chickens. They love getting new things to eat. You can tell it boosts their spirits. But in hard times, the table scraps become more of a staple for chickens. This means you have to get serious. We have always been pretty serious about it, and this is how we do it: We have a large glass bowl that stays in the refrigerator, and we put every single teeny tiny scrap into that bowl. When the bowl is full, it goes to the chickens. This is everything from the single edge of toast crust that my son didn’t eat at breakfast to leftover pan of rice when I accidentally cooked a little too much. It’s the three noodles left on the plate. It’s the piece of broccoli I just couldn’t fit in my tummy. Save it all. It adds up and can make such a difference and can help add variety to your chickens’ diet if you don’t have access to commercial feed.
For more information on what chickens can and cannot eat from your table (it’s pretty much everything you can eat), please check out this helpful list from Heritage Acres Market.
Foraging
Allowing your chickens room to forage for bugs, worms, and greens is a great way to feed them. Of course, given the fact that bird flu is on the rise, you may not always be able to give your chickens the space to feed themselves. It may be necessary to keep your chickens covered, but when bird flu is not a threat, allowing your chickens to fend for themselves can supplement other methods of feeding chickens. Ours love the dandelions and clover, which is a reminder to plant clover instead of grass if you can and definitely let your yard be wild.
Grow a Garden
I remember my great grandmother feeding her chickens from the garden, and we do the same thing. We can’t do it in the winter here in Maine, so winter would be tough on us in many ways if we couldn’t access chicken feed; however, from the first of May when the greens come to the middle of October when the tomatoes are winding down and the squash is ready, our chickens eat a lot from our garden. Ron grows greens the full growing season, so the chickens always have that. Then it’s beet tops, raspberries, blueberries, so many tomatoes, fresh corn, melons, and so on. There is always something about to get by us in the garden, and the chickens can take advantage of it.
And, at the end of the growing season, we let the chickens into the garden to glean, and they surely do. They love the leaves from the broccoli plants all of the tomato drops.
Grains
According to everything I have read, no grain is ideal for chickens because they need such variety in their diets, but corn, wheat, and oats can be good in combination with something like soy or another protein. While there is certainly nothing that can fully replace a really good layer pellet, the reality that layer pellets can generally only last about six months stored means that it might be a good option to store grains, which can be stored for years and may be easier to purchase during tough times. They can also be grown if you have the space.
After reading this helpful article on chicken nutrition and grains from Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners, I hope we can always access our chicken feed, but it’s good to know that chickens can get by without it. The key is definitely just to use variety and use all of these methods listed here. You also have to provide supplements if you aren’t using chicken feed.
Supplements
Without feed, there are supplements that your chickens will need. First, the laying hens will need calcium supplements. Oyster shell works great. We also save our egg shells and crush them to feed back to the hens as a calcium supplement. They will also need grit. Grit is really just small stones that chickens can eat that stay in their gizzards to grind up larger food items like bugs and pieces of meat from scraps.
Final Thoughts
I have read in some forums that people say chickens are not worth keeping if things get so bad that you can’t access commercial feed, but I disagree. My great grandparents survived the Great Depression by growing their own food, and that included chickens. I have also read stories from people who lived through the Great Depression and felt that the chickens were part of the reason they survived. Chickens provide eggs, meat, and fertilizer. They also provide resources for trade.
Humans domesticated chickens 8,000 to 10,000 years ago, and we have been living side by side ever since. There’s a good reason we have had such a long relationship with this amazing animal.
P.S. If you have additional ideas, please share. I have been wondering about a meal worm farm but don’t know if it’s hard to do.