- Free range or modified free range
- Whole grains-grown your own, wheat, oats, barley, some corn
- Sprout whole grains in the winter
- Weeds – lamb’s quarter, pigweed, comfrey, chickweed, alfalfa, chard, clover, dandelion greens, cress, grass, sunflower seeds, squash, pumpkins, vegetable kitchen scraps, fall garden cleanup
- Table and Kitchen scraps
- Slugs, snails, and other bugs
Ducks/Geese
- Similar to chickens
- Different – foragers, bugs of all sorts, grass, weeds, corn, non-medicated rabbit pellets
Cows
- Hay, pasture (â…› acre per cow), legumes, peas, corn silage, mangel beets, sugar beet tailings, root vegetables, carrots, crushed beans, clover, alfalfa, lavender, comfrey, kale
- Trees-willow, mulberry, poplar
- Wintering – for 1 cow, approximately 2 tons of alfalfa hay (need both roughage and protein) alfalfa provides both
Goats
- Some brush, grass, variety of weeds/herbs
- Vegetables, grains, mangel beets, corn dodder, carrot tops, lettuce, second-cutting alfalfa, melon rinds, roses bushes, apple branches, squash
- Wintering – for 1 goat, 6 – 9 bales of good second cutting alfalfa, some vegetables, grain rations, brush per goat
Sheep
- Grass
- Enriching pasture add-alfalfa, orchard grass, sweet clover, dandelion, burdock, just about anything they can reach, and timothy
- Wintering glean corn harvested fields, root vegetables, hay (10 bales alfalfa) & grain ration – 75 pounds per sheep
Above material: Carla Emery’s book, The Encyclopedia of Country Living, 10th edition, 2008.
Rabbits
- Prefer clover-hay, but good alfalfa, vegetable and fruit cuttings from the kitchen, vegetable tops, salad leftovers, lawn cuttings
Pigs
- Eat just about anything, need a balance of protein and carbs, will consume 800-1000 pounds of feed to reach market weight
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