LAST EDITED ON Feb-08-13 AT 02:58AM (MST)[p]We ate a lot of our own Chickens, turkeys, and ducks too. We fed them barley which we had lots of from the decent harvest years that we didn't cut it all green, go to making hay. Also Grandma always put the fruit and veggie scraps out for them. They ranged around the outer yard of the ranch and often roosted up in trees to avoid the critters that came for them at night. They was good at catching and eating bugs too but grasshoppers didn't stand a chance once a good hen was on one.
Most of my younger years, i ran a trap line mostly to help keep down those that would eat the chickens and i caught all manner of pests, even some of the bigger birds, in my traps. I don't know if a guy can make it pan out unless he gets the feed cheap. The eggs were great but sometimes tough to find until they went bad. Such was the life for a kid on the ranch. If you heard a hen cackle up toward the barn, you'd best be looking for where she had laid her egg cause that could help you find the full nest when they choose, like some did, to hide it instead of laying on the straw in the hen house boxes.
My Grandma raised hundreds of baby chicks under her wood stove. She'd get attached to them chicks and they'd follow her around like she was their mother but then she also had no problem taking a cleaver to their necks when they got older. I found that odd as a youth, still do, but then i never, ever back-talked my Grandma!
Edit; i almost forgot. Something that you don't see much now days is someone cracking a egg into a little dish or bowl before it goes in the fry pan. Back then with our ranch eggs, we didn't have a way to tell a good fresh egg from one that...wasn't. Each egg got inspected in the dish before it slid in the pan and believe me, that caution was for the best!
Joey
"It's all about knowing what your firearms practical limitations are and combining that with your own personal limitations!"