Interesting lil thing the wife brought up.... because apparently she's slowly becoming a bit of a proper now lol, anyhow she asked , " hay if the bomb dropped today and we can't get animal food ...how the heck are we going. To feed our little .... whatever, don't wanna call a few birds dogs and soon to be other critters a farm

Anyhow now it's got us looking at possibly learning how to grow some kinda grain type plants for the chickens along with black soldier fly composters or maggot farms. Rabbits , looking at setting a few little areas a side to grow various grasses and what not for fresh fodder and to basically make hay to store. But trying. To keep it nice with our wet winters might be a issue...The quail are the biggest pain though because well... All they really eat is this crumble food and bugs so maybe we could grind corn or something and feed them the meal ? Idk I seen people use a coffee grinder to find up oyster shells for them so maybe something like that with grain ? And the dogs .. well critter carcasses or basically just make a soup outta bones and left overs . Shoot remember talking with a lot of the old timers and a lot of those guys barley fed there hunting or porch dogs much more then table scraps and everything else they had to hunt for themselves
Anyhow what's about y'all ? What's the plan ? Just stockpile ? Make your own ? What if the fuel supply gets super low and your stuck without a tractor for you rakes and balers and stuff. It's a interesting conversation to have with yourself ... Makes ya think .... I mean at least me I'm not a super farmer like some of y'all

Hey wolfdog ! I've thought a bit about this. We always stay away from mainly grain based livestock live chickens, hogs etc.

We look at dairy sheep mainly Icelandic breed etc for wool for clothing (we live in a colder climate) meat and milk for cheese butter etc.

Mainly grass based diet, some browse could supplement with grain for lactating animals and whatnot.

The issue I foresee in a SHTF situation is if you grow your own grains etc those are mainly machine cultivated with a tractor, ATV, walk behind tractor etc. Though you COULD do it by hand small scale, you'll have to dry grain, store it etc. If you grow any grains I'd just do a dent corn for animal feed for raw calories honestly. You scythe to cut hay.

Grass (clovers, alfalfa's etc) is the least expensive, most nutrition packed food for livestock and if you learn how to be a GRASS farmer, you'll be a deadly livestock farmer for beef, sheep etc.

Just if you look at sheep remember they're more prone to parasites. Learn more about them from someone who raises them & always splash some Apple cider vinegar in with their water.

For your grains look at small grains instead of corn, as the straw is easier to handle for feed and bedding with pitchforks and by hand than cornstalks, if you’re milking goats then have hogs and slop feed them, I’d use some type of night crawler instead of maggots as you don’t have to deal with more flies around, I’m not sure if flystrike is a problem with goats like sheep but I wouldn’t want to add to the issue, as for grit limestone works if you don’t have oyster shells, and have a hand powered burr mill, if you understand steam engines you could have a small stationary for power, also you need a one, two, three, four, five, and silage pitchfork plus various scoops.

learn to make moonshine. good for medical, can run small engines, and great for trade. You can fermint about anything in a pinch.

If animal feed gets low I suspect your food supply may be low as well so eat the animals.

At least I believe you will be busy enough trying to keep yourself and family safe and feed i dont think you will have a lot of time growing for animal feed at least right off during the mad max panic that will come.

Im PF on this. If it happens you will have ur hands full keeping your body and soul together. Butcher and put up as many of the animals you can, especially the ones that can't forage for themselves. You won't have the time for any animals that require high maintenance. Grain does have a shelf life. The best option would be a very close neighbor that has feed in volume that you could trade some meat for feed to for a short term option. Maybe make sure to keep a few months of feed on hand always......
Buddy of mine was without power for a couple weeks. They had maybe a dozen horses and a couple 4h animals. They had a smaller generator that would run the well for water and the feed on hand and said it was about all he could do to keep the animals and generator taken care of. If your going to prep, prep for yourself first because that will be ur priority. Its much harder to provide for yourself without power and gas than most people would think.

Imo I don't really think the SHTF deal will be this massive horrible max max level deal . I really don't most to think is it will be more like a another great depression but with more wackos .
But here the deal , if we eat the animals then we have food for what....a week ? However keeping critter like chicken and quail alive , well they make eggs and stuff so that's just constant food ..

As far as moonshine.....well it's on the list lol. And it's funny that stuff got more .. acceptable I guess in recent years .. I mean the amount of stove top kits you can buy is crazy now and so many are openly posting it....pretty neat

. Then chicken can forage for them self Anything that can't gets put on a plate. Down south they should be able to have bugs almost year round correct? Now that will require not keeping them in a tractor and you will have losses.

.. use those chickens to bait in humans… eat the prime cuts and use the rest to keep your bait alive

.. also quit watching apocalyptic YouTube videos

Down here our great grands grew corn, had corn cribs, a box with a corn sheller mounted on the barn and a hand crank mill. Turned the cows, hogs, goats and sheep out in the woods, chickens were kept up due to critters but otherwise could shift for themselves. But they didn't have coyotes back then, and bear and panthers were shot out.
They would keep the milk cow up close and the rest close in winter with salt and corn. Cottonseed meal was more readily available back then as well.

Just remembered, cane stalks went to the cows after squeezing.

I doubt they figured in not having electricity and fuel. Wolfie would have an advantage not having to deal with cold weather. It if it really hits the fan not having fuel and money having no value every job becomes many times more difficult

Neighbors are gonna kill and steal your livestock.

So, better buy more bullets!

Warrior is right. Go back and look up the writings and literature of the old folks around 1900-1920s; particularly in your area and how they did it. They tell you how they lived and how they survived. If you dig hard there is a lot of local oral stories written down. They are worth their weight in gold.

Build yerself a good smokehouse; both hotsmoke and coldsmoke worthy. Build a corn crib and have means to process raw wheat, corn, and milo. Build a potato house or have a means of storing them. The south is trickier than up north as far as smoking and storing goes. Learn how to garden efficiently. A 1/10th acre garden can grow more food than a small family needs in a year and can sale the rest.

Our great grandparents would plant several acres just to feed the chickens and hogs and livestock that would survive them through the winter.

Times were always busy and hard then; but people visited more and cared more about each other. If a neighbor needed help, there was always plenty willing to help. The wind blew both ways. They were more than neighbors; they were family and depended upon one another. A tight knit community that cared for one another. The way God intended.

I really doubt you'd have time to be tending patches of grains. Quail would be about worthless... they won't brood and the amount of meat and eggs they produce is so small. Eat them first. Keep some chickens. They should be able to free range 100%, year around where you live. Unless you get snow/ice cover for more than a few days in which case you'd need to find something to feed them. Make sure the breed of chickens you have is a broody breed and of course have a couple roosters. I might be tempted to keep a pair (M & F) of milk goats and try to let them 100% free range as well, if you have enough land to do so. If they run out of stuff to eat, you can eat them. Spend your time growing foods to feed yourself, not critters. Get good at snaring before you have to be good at it. Remember someone will need to be on guard duty 24 hours a day as it's only a matter of time before people come to take what you have and they will kill you for it if you don't kill them first. Buy "The Encyclopedia of Country Living" and "Storey's Basic Country Skills"........there won't be any internet to look up how to do everything you find out you don't know how to do. First of all...... figure out what you will do for potable water... and then go from there. And posting on the internet about your intent to make shine probably isn't very wise.

If it gets bad enough to worry about feeding the critters on the farm you will have far more to worry about

With population density as it is, better be able to fend off the "looters" for the first few weeks

Yep you and warrior are talking about what Ive been doing as far as thought process and stuff. Again the whole mad max deal....I feel that's a fantasy more then anything... But anyhow I'm really only ... Two or three generations removed from a life atley y'all are talking about . Remember my grandma talking at length about how her and here ... Think 5-6 bothers and sisters and mom and dad subsisted pretty heavy on a small farm, honestly not crazy big... They didn't buy a lot of feed...went able to due to money aaannnd some jim crow stuff but thats another story.

But yeah remember her just kinda talking about having a few rabbits in a hutch.. they would just cut grass from a patch they had by the house... Don't know what it was jus knew if grew quick and toss a fist full in for them. Chickens , table scraps , whatever they could find , and corn. Pigs ... Slop buck from table scraps. Said it was already stuff they were doing or had . Which makes sense... Dang I miss her ..
My uncle was actually talking to me about another relative I had the grew quail. Said he never bought feed... Think he said something about using a hand mill for ... something I'd don't remember...

But anyhow little bummed now , thinking of my Grandma and all...think imma go reorganize the deck or something

I mean it's happened a few times already. Hurricanes and the like ... Again I'm not talking about anything super crazy so let's relax with a that lol. I know I was saying we where talking about a bomb dropping but If anything more like strained supply line chain nation wide or something.

We have plans for more major stuff I prefer not to talk about lol

The roving bands of marauders will steal all your food and destroy your crops and animals. Your best bet is to hide food, guns ammo and your family from the marauders.

Always told the kids..you can never starve as long as there's still people around......

Well if that's the scenario u talking about then your over thinking it way too much. Just keep 6 months to a years supply of feed on hand. Replace it as u feed it. I promise u, you can buy it cheaper than u can raise, harvest and processi it.

Ps
If you prefer not to talk it about why bring it up????? Those kind of comments make no sense to me.

Well everyone keeps being up plans for dealing with crazed marauder and stuff , figured it's because I don't say anything about how I'd plan on it ... So I'm just saying I have plans on it to save some folks down breath . Simple as that.

Every old farmstead I was on that dated back to before electricity had a house with dug well, cistern, or both (wood heat), barn (mostly for work horses or mules.......barn got built before the house did.....barn also had a hay loft and corn crib), chicken house, smoke house and root cellar. Big animals like hogs and a beef were slaughtered in Dec......hung in the smoke house and cut up as needed all winter.......then what was left in spring was canned when weather started warming up. Hams and bacon cured.......lard rendered......lye soap made.

If it runs on electricity, you don't want it. Cordless drills run on electricity. You will need hand saws (cross cut and rip), brace and bits, hammer and a whole lot of nails. Back then there were also mills for flour and grain, but forget that. You will need a hand cranked mill if you want to make bread or meal. You will also need that pressure canner and enough reusable lids to last you a while.

And good luck with that garden. There won't be anyplace to buy seed, and no seed to buy if there was.

My bad. Miss understood i thought u were talking bigger plans for more animals. I can understand now.

It's all good
But nah think I'll be keeping my critters down for a while . Been dealing with cattle since I was in diapers ..... I miss it but it's way easier deking with a hand full of birds and some small furry critters

Get pigeons.never haveto feed or water them.some of the old castles have big pigeon lofts in the tops of them.when a castle was under siege,that's how they kept fed.pigeons would fly out every morning and feed and water themselves and return back to the lofts in the castle every eavning.

House cats become feral very quickly. People become animals even faster and are the largest threat in society break down or just when they believe they can get away with it.

Its always good to know how to be as self sufficient as possible. But for short term its been stated above its cheaper to keep a good stock pile you rotate out.

check out the Fox fire Books

Keep a small bucket in the kitchen for egg shell and other compostable plant scraps to scatter around for the chickens, A lid will keep bugs down and/or keep the bucket hanging outside. Seems like just about anything on a farm will eat corn, whole or scratch. Supply plenty of water for them too.

Just thinking about more things if you’re building something for grain storage wood is best because of natural breathing of the wood, I’ve seen oats be 20 years old stored in wood bins that still germinate, I still say hogs are your best bet as they can survive on almost anything, also have some good hoes for weeding otherwise you get into the horse area to do work with, also stockpile some salt for feeding but also meat preservation.

This is from my great great grandmother/aunt. She was born in 1903.......

"The farm we run there on the West Prong kept us pretty busy. We hitched a horse to plow. That's all we had. We didn't have no equipment like today. You just had a horse and single-bit plow and a cultivator and things like that. We raised our own food and we canned most of it. We canned all of our food from garden season to the next. String beans, greens, black-eyed peas, and meat. We canned most of our meat. We killed our meat and canned or smoked nearly all of it. We made just about everything we used, so therefore we just stayed at home. That's why people used to didn't to to town to much, you know. Unless they wanted flour or wire or somethin' they couldn't make. We grew our own corn, and used to a mill here that grinded corn into meal. My daddy took our corn in to grind, once a week. Sometimes I'd tag along jus' for somethin' to do.

"Gardening was somethin' we done alot of in them days. Each year we had seeds that we saved from the year before. Part of our garden each year was the seed garden. We let things mature, you know, and go to seed and then we picked them seeds and dried them and used them the next year. That way you didn't buy seeds. There wasn't no such thing as storebought seeds anyway. There just wansn't any.

"O good night, we done everything, hon. We milked cows, we fed pigs, we fed chickens, we fed turkeys, ducks, everything in the world you can think of. And we plucked ducks, made our own pillows. Now I was just a child, but I helped do it. We had all of that river front, too. The West Sabinal run in front of our home, the river did, and when we wanted to fish, we went down there and caught fish. When I was a youn'un, the river was full of fish. Sunfish, catfish, big ol' bass. We had two horses that we plowed with, with a walking plow. That's what my daddy used in that day. But we didn't have a whole lot in cultivation. And we would plant that in corn, mostly. We grew higara or maizes for the chickens we had. When that grain matured we had to cut all of it. Head it, they called it back then, cause you cut the maizehead off it, and then you let that grain head dry and you fed that to the chickens. We didn't have to buy anything but flour.

"I'll tell you son, them wasn't bad times. People were happy. Everybody was your neighbor and your friend. If someone was behind in their crops, each neighbor would go help. Or if a barn needed rainsin' folks would come out and help all day. It was happy times, and we had good times. Course I wouldn't won't to live back there now, cause I've had these conveniences too long. But people were happy then. They knew they belonged to a community of folks that cared about 'em. "

Been thinking on it and there was at least sixty acres my great grand kept under cultivation on the 270 acre homeplace. Just in back of the house was the north and south fieldsfield divided by a lane. Don't know if he planted it all up every year, but the bulk of it was in corn. He also kept a cane patch, ribbon cane, going and a vegetable patch as he would haul vegetables and eggs into town on Saturdays. He had two chicken houses. He also had a ten acre cotton patch as his main cash crop on the other side of the property. The neighbor across the road kept twenty to thirty acres in corn as well. It was him, my grandfather and a colored family that lived on the place that did all the work. When the cotton was ready it was all hands on deck to get it picked and to market. My great aunt who was married would even come back home to help get the crop in.
He also had cows and hogs in the woods.

Granny would say that Make, my great grand, would work himself into the bed every year getting the cotton in as he had a bad heart and would work until he dropped and would take weeks to recover. He would eventually die in the middle of getting his last crop in.

Salt of the Earth Warrior. Folks that really Made America Great.

Good stories Chancey and Warrior.

For your grazers the nuclear grass will really make them grow and maybe even worm them too. Raise garden vegetables for your other animals and pets. The soil contamination from isotopes like cesium-137 persists for decades so maybe you can just wait it out ! A good protein source might be green friend tomatoes, but its mostly in the sauce where the protein comes from. Learn to improvise !

I mean, if something went over the edge and nuclear happened and just wiped it all off the map I'll just bend over and kiss my butt goodbye. I don't get that far into prepping, if we can't grow food, hunt animals, graze animals or drink water, I'd say we're pretty screwed altogether