Once or twice a week we head off to the feed store and buy bags of feed for the animals. Even dogs and cats get bags of food supposedly perfectly formulated to keep them healthy and filled with everything they need to survive. It's very convenient and means that we don't have to worry about them having a balanced diet.
What did people do before those bags of food were available for the animals? Obviously, a weekly trip to town wasn't something the pioneers did. The cowboys didn't haul around a sack of feed for their dog and horse in their saddle bags. Feeding formulated feed didn't happen until the very last part of the 1800s and even then it wasn't economical for everybody. During the depression people could barely feed themselves and would have had a difficult time buying bagged food for their animals on top of weekly shopping.
Past generations learned to grow and harvest their own animal feed. They did it for thousands of years and there is no reason we can't do it now. If we consider that in most cases the animals are even capable of harvesting their own then that cuts down on the labor considerably.
For now, I buy feed for my animals too because I can go to a local mill where they grind it fresh and the animals that get it do very well. I also supplement that feed with other things which keeps the feed bill lower and helps me to learn how to grow their feed if a time comes when for some reason I can't buy it.
We have many different animals but for the most part livestock large and small, all naturally eat a vegetarian diet. Whether you have a small homestead or a larger homestead you CAN grow or harvest food for your animals. The biggest difference is that the smaller homestead will only sustain a few animals and the people who live there while a bigger place offers bigger places to grow feed.
An animal can and will graze or browse for its own food. Just grass provides food for poultry, pigs, rabbits and larger livestock. Make sure the grass is not treated with anything harmful like weed and feed. In the fall, we rake dried leaves from the woods and bag them up for some of the animals. We also store hay which is just dried grass and most livestock eats it. Pigs, rabbits and goats eat the leaves. Don't bag them wet or you will have mold and that is bad in feed. They can also be allowed to forage for their own leaves if you provide a place. We gather the fallen nuts from oak and hickory trees and feed them to the pigs and also let them and the cows graze for their own in some areas. Honeysuckle vines are a good source of protein for animals too and if it grows on the fence they will eat all they can reach. It's best to keep the roots to the outside so that they won't be damaged by the animals and so that they can resprout for another crop.
Melons and their vines, mixed greens and their roots, carrots and their tops, turnips, beets of ALL kinds but especially mangles which are huge, pumpkins and their vines, corn and the stalks, grains, sweet potatoes and the vines, Jerusalem artichokes and their stalks, fruit and nuts from trees wild and cultivated can all be planted specifically for feeding the animals but eaten by humans too.
In the case of pigs, they can be allowed to harvest their own root vegetables when they are ready. They will root them up and eat all they find and in the process they plow and fertilize for the next crop. I have started planting fenced in areas of things like pumpkin, beets and corn and when its ready the gate is opened and they do the work of harvesting themselves.
For other animals, the roots would have to be pulled and chopped before feeding and in the case of chickens boiling them and feeding them soft with the juice is the only way they can eat them since they don't have teeth. Even without teeth the chickens can graze and eat the leafy green tops and the roots can be fed to something else.
In a time when food really is scarce then some of the food will have to be stored for feeding during the winter months. The root vegetables should store well and so should the leaves and hay. Greens can be dried as well but will require plenty of space to do it without mold. I have never tried to make silage but that can be another way of storing animal feed as well.
That's all well and good for most of the animals but it doesn't provide anything for the dogs and cats which are often the working animals on the homestead. Obviously they need meat for their diet. Their time comes when the butchering is done. They get anything the people don't eat and the scraps from cooking. Some of their food from butchering can be canned for times when there isn't anything else available. I can up chicken and rabbit bones or scraps and they mash up with a fork after pressure canning. Here on the farm we also have extra or cracked eggs which are fed both to the dogs and the pigs.
For now, we feed a mixture of foods both grown and purchased and I have some commercial feed stored for the animals as well. I also store and grow seeds needed to plant feed crops for a future when there may be no commercial feeds because the animals are part of my survival plan. That plan is NOT complete if you're not prepared to feed the meat, egg, or milk animals WTSHTF. Give growing feed some thought when you are planning to add animals to your preps whether its pigeons, rabbits or larger livestock.
Southern Wood Elf