Foraging for our animals

[Aklogcabin]

We restarted our rabbitry. So I go out daily to harvest fresh greens. Dandelions, babies love chickweed, grass clippings. Woody plants, birch, willow, aspen. This reduces my food costs n supplies the needed nutrients. I try to balance it .
I train our Chesapeake Bay Retriever to hunt up moose antlers. So I guess we forage them together. She gets nice dog chew bones. And they can fetch a good price.

 

[joel]

Coppice forests also supplied food. On the one hand, they provided people with fruits, berries, truffles, nuts, mushrooms, herbs, honey, and game. On the other hand, they were an important source of winter fodder for farm animals. Before the Industrial Revolution, many sheep and goats were fed with so-called “leaf fodder” or “leaf hay” – leaves with or without twigs. [6]

Elm and ash were among the most nutritious species, but sheep also got birch, hazel, linden, bird cherry and even oak, while goats were also fed with alder. In mountainous regions, horses, cattle, pigs and silk worms could be given leaf hay too. Leaf fodder was grown in rotations of three to six years, when the branches provided the highest ratio of leaves to wood. When the leaves were eaten by the animals, the wood could still be burned.
https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2020/09/how-to-make-biomass-energy-sustainable-again.html

 

[Amish Heart]

Each of our chicken runs get two buckets each of "weeds" each morning, along with their feed. Dandelions mostly. Our turkeys are starting to enjoy their buckets, too. They also get garden seconds. I grew way too much kale, so they all got that regularly. The lettuce and spinach, too, when it bolted.

 

[joel]

I pick worms off my tomatoes & other vegetables, then feed them to the birds.