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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Treebore" data-source="post: 4294546" data-attributes="member: 10177">You know why chickens were kept as pets in so much of Europe, including Russia?They ate bugs from almost invisible to the naked eye up to huge beetles. They eat young mice. They laid eggs. Eggs.Personally I prefer Ducks. They are fly/bug/beetle eating machines and eat even adult mice and young rats. Plus their eggs are very, very protein rich. Of course I am talking truly "free ranged" birds. Not the farm fed corn and seed eating varieties you get from Tyson and egg producers.I am talking like I raise, and what was raised in the old days. Live stock that primarily feeds itself and is only provided grains when the insects are in short supply, IE the winter months.Give a poor family about 6 good egg laying hens and they will eat very well in terms of meat and protein.BTW, in the old days people in the cities kept chickens too. IT wasn't just a farm thing.However, it was certainly much easier to keep and feed chickens/ducks out in the country side.So when I read the great experts on history I see great gaping holes in many of their assumptions because of their lack of knowledge about farming and the keeping of livestock, especially within the confines of a city.I do agree that the poor were very poor. I do agree a big percentage survived on "gruel". Now as to what the gruel was, that I think is largely open to a wide range of things. Since it certainly wasn't the top grade of foods that the rich would have eaten, the rich likely called it gruel, no mater what the actual contents were. Whatever it was the rich thought it was disgusting, and just used the word gruel to describe it instead of "That disgusting trash the poor peasants eat."</blockquote>

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