Earlier Hay

DominusNovus said:
Uhhh, they usually killed most of the animals in the fall for this very reason. Autumn is still the peak season for selling (read: slaughtering) animals. They just kept the minimum around.

But you're right, what else could they eat? Animals are totally incapable of eating wheat, oats, etc. :rolleyes:

Unfortunately the evidence is clear that animal domestication (especially cattle and horses) came before the agricultural revolution. Unless you think that people gathered wild grasses like emmer and wild oats to feed them.

Perhaps the domestication of animals led to the domestication of plants to allow them to be fed a higher standard of feed during winter. Storing wild oats and emmer is hardly different to storing hay I would think. Feeding animals grains is hardly likely to come before feeding them hay.
 
MarkA said:
Unfortunately the evidence is clear that animal domestication (especially cattle and horses) came before the agricultural revolution. Unless you think that people gathered wild grasses like emmer and wild oats to feed them.

Perhaps the domestication of animals led to the domestication of plants to allow them to be fed a higher standard of feed during winter. Storing wild oats and emmer is hardly different to storing hay I would think. Feeding animals grains is hardly likely to come before feeding them hay.
You do realize that animals somehow survived the winter before we came around to begin with, right?
 
Yes but they were not penned up. They were able to roam freely and browse on lichens and moss if no grass was around. Similarly, wild horses now feed on bark and any small green things they can find when times are tough.

What changed was that now they were confined. Human survival was not easy during winter either. They had neither the time, energy or probably inclination to go around scavenging for lichens to feed their newly domesticated animals. Feeding them grains from the wild ancestors of modern staples would be an odd thing to do since they relied on them to survive themselves.

Humans cannot digest grass like cattle or horses do. Yet if they cut the grass and dried it and turned it into hay then the animals would not be competing against humans for food. Therefore, I would think that it would be an obvious and natural thing to do.
 
MarkA said:
Unfortunately the evidence is clear that animal domestication (especially cattle and horses) came before the agricultural revolution. Unless you think that people gathered wild grasses like emmer and wild oats to feed them.

Perhaps the domestication of animals led to the domestication of plants to allow them to be fed a higher standard of feed during winter. Storing wild oats and emmer is hardly different to storing hay I would think. Feeding animals grains is hardly likely to come before feeding them hay.

You forget that domestication and the agricultural revolution originally occured in warmer areas where grass grew year-round.

By the time people in Northern Euorope got the domesticated animals "technology pack", they would have got the benefits of the agricultural revolution as well.
 
Domestication of the horse occurred on the steppes and was introduced to the Near East after the rise of civilization there. Indeed, the earliest definitive proof that horses were already domesticated (probably as a food source) is from about 3500 BC in the Ukraine.
 
MarkA said:
Domestication of the horse occurred on the steppes and was introduced to the Near East after the rise of civilization there. Indeed, the earliest definitive proof that horses were already domesticated (probably as a food source) is from about 3500 BC in the Ukraine.
Not by the kind of people who were prone to settling in one place and corraling their animals...
 
The earliest evidence for someone riding a horse is much later. As I posted, the earliest domestication of horses was probably for their meat - not their transport qualities.

People did not go tramping around the countryside in winter. They stayed in nice warm tents or huts etc. Their animals were penned alongside them or in the hut with them. They were not left outside in the snow and cold. Nor were they transmigrated during winter. The evidence of semi-permanent and permanent settlements where people settled for years is clear.
 
I see these posts are from more than 10 years ago. I wish I could have been more timely.
As a horse keeper, I want to point out that feeding equines grain is not good for them, they do perfectly well on hay, and more hay if the quality isn't very good. A horse or donkey can easily die from eating a lot of grain. So anyone keeping horses would do best to eat the grain themselves. Equines only need to eat grain if they are working so hard that there isn't enough time to eat enough hay, and by the way, it's better to give them the extra calories in oil,oil doesn't mess up their gut bacteria as much and it's easily digested.
 
I see these posts are from more than 10 years ago. I wish I could have been more timely.
As a horse keeper, I want to point out that feeding equines grain is not good for them, they do perfectly well on hay, and more hay if the quality isn't very good. A horse or donkey can easily die from eating a lot of grain. So anyone keeping horses would do best to eat the grain themselves. Equines only need to eat grain if they are working so hard that there isn't enough time to eat enough hay, and by the way, it's better to give them the extra calories in oil,oil doesn't mess up their gut bacteria as much and it's easily digested.

Start a new thread for this, necromancy of old threads is not prohibited unfortunately.
 
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