Forum: Author Hangout

In a scenario where there are no manufacturers producing commercial animal feed of any kind, what do you feed the animals? There is no brand-name food for pet dogs or cats. No supplemental store-bought food for chickens, cows, horses, etc.
I realize, logically, that there was a time when those commercial products were not available. What did pets and farm animals eat in the winter time?

At first I was amused but then decided to answer as best I can.

Farm animals. If they are in the wild they forage. They dig in the snow to find grass or eat the remnants on twigs. If they are on a farm they eat stored grass, grain and hay that the farmers toiled all spring, summer and fall to grow, gather and store.

My great great grandparents who homesteaded often had to let their oxen go in the early winter as they had no feed. The animals were left to forage on their own and they were seldom found in the spring.

Pets, Cats and dogs can feed themselves, especially on a farm. They hunt. They eat rodents and scavenge. They will eat scraps that the humans don't.

You should read the little house on the prairie books. Good descriptions of early rural life and survival.

I realize, logically, that there was a time when those commercial products were not available. What did pets and farm animals eat in the winter time?

For herbivore livestock like cows and horses, grains and hay would be stored away to use as feed in the winter and the animals would largely be allowed to graze during the growing season.

Omnivore livestock like pigs and dogs (not pure carnivores) would largely be fed human food, some table scraps and some special prepared if a large number of animals were kept.

Cats may have gotten supplemented with table scraps, but they were often kept for the purpose of hunting mice and rats and would at least partly feed themselves.

My question is if you are unable to feed or care for the animal then why do you have or want to have said animal ? Now to answer your question animals are not stupid so if you do not confine/entrap them they can and will fend for themselves with the exception on if you bring an animal to far away from where it can be found natively (as in this is why birds migrate).

Perfect example the cats on my farm I don't and never have fed them. Yes I always make sure they have a water source but as to feeding them nope never and yet they never seem to die from starvation either. During the summer and early fall the horses and cows rarely eat from the hay bails that are placed out to guarantee that they have a food source as they find the growing grasses in the fields that they have access to sufficient but even in the winter months with snow on the ground and hay bails around you can sometimes find them looking for food under the snow.

In a scenario where there are no manufacturers producing commercial animal feed of any kind

...there's probably no manufacturer of sliced bread or ready made clothing either.

So you live in a homestead that only ever needs to import salt, metal tools and luxury goods. You have stacked hay, you have dedicated stores for various types of grain, beans, and peas, you have huge cellar full of beets, carrots, potatoes and apples, and what's not, and your clothing starts by sowing linen and breeding sheep. And your farm has a specialized room called animal's kitchen where you, yes, process various ingredients into precursors of the commercial feedstock you thought about as indispensable.

Livestock were domesticated for convenience. They do not, as species, depend on humans for survival.

That said, livestock can and is kept in places and intensities far outside natural ranges. And of course, there's huge space of gradual scale between fully independent homestead and industrialized feed producers with various methods and benefits of specialization and cooperation at every step. But even in most of those scenarios manufactured ready feed is convenience product on par with Macdonalds (only healthier, mostly).

Of course going back to basics needs some knowledge, but a lot of that can be picked up by intelligent, attentive and wiling (or forced) to learn human on the fly. If no other way then simply by monitoring foraging habits, mood and health of said animals.

And of course, there's the often overlooked fact overwhelming majority of animal source products are already luxury goods in terms of bare survival, although those do gain utility and importance as further into cold climates you try to penetrate. Vegetarianism and especially veganism are survivable, but only make good sense in tropical or otherwise well controlled and comfortable environments.