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I'm not talking about a major operation. Just a dozen sheep or so, some chickens, a horse, maybe a couple of goats. We have been talking about selling a few of our properties to buy a farm and getting some livestock.
How many hours daily would you estimate it takes to care for the animals listed above?
If you have a farm with livestock, what do you do when you have to leave home for several days?
What do you wish you knew before getting livestock?
We have a gaggle of 12 goats, 4 sheep, 12 chickens, a pot bellied pig, and two horses. At times, we also have cattle but not now.
It takes, at minimum, 2 hours a day to feed and clean up after them. There are lots of other hours (lots of them!) periodically involved in trimming toes and doctoring/grooming, building and maintaining fencing, mowing, farm 'projects', but the minimum every day is about an hour, every morning and every night.
We keep ours closed in a secure barn at night, for their safety from predators as well as comfort and protection from the elements. That's why the need to clean their stalls every day. Conceivably, it would be cheaper and faster to do chores if they did not need to be fed supplemental food at night or cleaned up after inside.
We currently cannot travel, even overnight. We MUST be home every morning and every night at dusk. Seven days a week. We'd have to hire someone to come. We don't currently have anyone we know and trust, but we are hopeful about the teenage kids of a few friends who are now almost old enough!
What we were surprised about...
Chickens are much more fun than we thought they would be. Everyone should have chickens. They're just fun to watch, and give great eggs, every day.
Goats are even more fun...
They multiply even if you don't breed them. You just end up with more. We started out with 2 goats. Only one other has been born here. We now have 12. You do the math.
Sheep are better for keeping an area mowed than goats are.
Goats are bad to get out of their fence. You need to build the fence or have it built specifically for goats.
Chickens are not much trouble so long as you have a place where they can stay and predators can't get to them. Relatively speaking.
Livestock is probably more work than most city people imagine.
I have been grazing cattle (lease my land to cattle owners) for over 20 years, this does not make much money but it does reliably make some money. At the very least spend a couple hours to a half-day every month working on the fence. Where I am it's irrigated, so the pipes need moving ideally every 12 hours, but more realistically they get moved about every 2 days.
Except for the "chickens are fun" part, lollol. I was raised on a dairy farm which also included pigs and chickens. I was four when I got my first job of gathering eggs out from under those hens --- some of whom could be really nasty when I was trying to get their eggs out from under them, lollol
I still have horses. There is no going away overnight . Unless you have someone very reliable to feed the livestock and to make sure they always have fresh water.
Owning and caring for livestock is not something to be done in a flip and half-awrse manner.
Some city folks take on the task and do a phenomenal job of being caregivers to their livestock. Others shouldn't even have stuffed animals off the WalMart shelf.
Plan on being married to the critters. Learn to recognize the health issues of each type and have an veterinary emergency fund.
Be prepared to be be fixing fences and bush hogging pastures with frequency. That all requires special tools, unless you have plenty of $$$$ to hire someone.
Pastures --- that's another thing --- do NOT plan on over loading small acreage with lots of critters. I was raised The Rule of Thumb is five acres per head of large livestock. My current Ag person told me that same rule still applies today. By large livestock I mean cattle and horses, I don't know the general rule for sheep and goats but you need to know overcrowding begets a huge patch of mud and having to hay that livestock 365 days/year.
I still have horses. There is no going away overnight . Unless you have someone very reliable to feed the livestock and to make sure they always have fresh water.
Not just reliable. The sitter has to be knowledgeable about stock, too. They have to know how to handle the animals safely, and how to recognize early signs of illness (such as colic or founder). And in the case of dairy critters who aren't dried off, they have to know how to milk them. Finding a good farm-sitter is much, MUCH harder than finding a good pet-sitter!
If you are thinking about milk production - probably a goat makes more sense than a cow, the smallest cow will produce way more milk than even 10 people can use. You should allow the milk animal's offspring to take most of the milk, that way you don't have to milk the animal every day 2 or 3 X per day.
Honestly I looked into this years ago when I first had my current 13 acre plot. I decided to just buy some raw milk from a neighbor up the road and not mess with milking my own cow.
Keep in mind what Harry Chickpea has written on here several times - you can't grow or raise anything yourself anything like as cheaply as the big farmers do. There is a reason most economically viable farms are huge, and that most people don't raise animals or have a serious garden. That said if you want to raise your own food as a hobby and/or to get better quality, OK, have at it. But realize if you pay yourself minimum wage, your own products won't compete on price with even a small local grocery store.
Small farms are fun, a good place for kids to grow up....but small farms are work too.
Sheep are stupid...raised 'em for years. Sheep require shearing....it is hard work. . Good shears are $350 at least. Hiring it out is next to impossible for a small flock. Then there is lambing season...always in the dead of winter, on the coldest and snowy-est of nights...never during the day. Like I said, sheep are stupid, most require birthing assistance or at least monitoring. You want them giving birth in the barn, not out in the frozen pasture where the lambs will likely freeze....with the exception of the Black Welsh Mountain breed...they are extremely hardy and great mothers....can give birth in the snow and have the lamb dry in minutes.
Sheep are easy prey to roaming dog packs, get a guard dog and leave him/her with the sheep at all times....Great Pyrenees breed work well. Electric fence will keep out unwelcome critters.
Goats will climb on anything, fence, cars, round hay bales...IMO, more trouble than they are worth.
Cattle, low maintenance, but require good fence, corrals, chutes, squeeze chutes, loading ramp. Beef breeds can be milked, the teats are smaller tho'.
Hogs, need a clean environment to stay clean.
A horse is just a hole in the pasture you pour money into.
Feeding hay in the winter can be expensive, an option is to raise your own, causing more expense for equipment and storage...lets see...there is the tractor, the mower, the rake or tedder, the baler, the elevator to get the bales up into the hay loft....oh yeah, the labor and time to do it all.
Chickens...I agree, chickens are good, even tho' I don't like chickens...we now have three (have had up to 20), and have gotten 3 eggs a day even thru winter.
Ducks are entertaining if you have a pond....Indian Runner ducks will out lay lots of chicken breeds, and the eggs are larger and better for baking.
Geese/turkeys...butchered before they get mean are OK, I skinned my ducks and geese vs plucking...wrapped in bacon, they bake up just fine.
Rabbits...the best investment, easy to care for, meat is all white, low fat, verrry low cholesterol. 3 does and a buck will keep you in meat all year. From birth to 4 pound butcher weight in 8-10 weeks, times 8+ bunnies per litter, times eight litters per year times 3 does equals 80 pounds of dressed meat per year. Rabbit manure is great for your garden.
Go to amazon, search for "Raising xxx the Modern Way" For the xxx, insert goats, chickens, rabbits, sheep, pigs, etc.
Note that while Great Pyrenees dogs are great sheep dogs, they bark all the time and are not good pets, and if your neighbors can hear the barking, they won't be pleased with it. Not usually.
They also chase off coyotes, if you have those around.
I should mention that neither my husband nor I eat meat, nor do we intend to butcher any animals. We would be looking for wool and milk from any goats or sheep and eggs from chickens (though ducks are an interesting idea.) No cattle at the moment though we have talked about a dairy cow. If we do this it will be starting small with smaller animals. I would love a horse but it's probably not something we would do right away. I had horses as a teenager and younger adult and I understand the expenses and time consumption associated with that.
Likewise we wouldn't need this to be a profit driven venture. It would be fantastic if it paid for itself but we aren't figuring that into the equation. This would definitely be a hobby farm as we have other sources of income.
Last edited by emotiioo; 01-22-2019 at 04:16 PM..
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