Your own lamb, milk, or eggs is a plan with legs
First, the BAD NEWS.
My cousin called. He said, “Just got my first fertilizer bill. We’re up 90-105%. Not good.”
I asked if they’ll make it out all right. He’s not one for drama. “We’ll get through,” he said. Then he added—and for context here, remember that his farm isn’t a little mom and pop, it’s a healthy, robust multigeneration family concern with a wholly-owned farm business with a diversified product base and multiple sections of land—he added, “its like you said in the [newsletter]. Grim is on the table.”
We’re praying for him and all the other business farmers, and we hope you are too.
Now let’s talk about you and me. Expect food costs and food shortages to keep going up. And its possible it could get even worse than that. Grim is on the table.
Good thing you are foresighted.
Once you recognize the problem (see here ), then there are some fun, simple steps to cushion you and the ones you love. Pick one from each category
PUT SOME FOOD AWAY. Beans and rice, or tallow, maybe some jerky, or think about your water supply.
BECOME A HOME FARMER
you can do it in one weekend, in as little as two hours. You should. It’s easy. It’s wholesome. It’s good.
You can do it by raising produce.
Or you can do it by raising animals (this article).
Next time we’ll address the third part, which is YOUR SOCIAL NET.
What You Get in this Newsletter
Steading and the good life are about more than just preparing for society shocks. But they include preparation. So the point of this series is to help you to expand your resilience by getting you to add one thing to your stack that you aren’t already doing.
What you are going to get here isn’t a complete guide to raising animals. But what you will get is a honest evaluation of the pros and cons and considerations based on experience. There’s going to be no marketing and no theory here.
One last bit of encouragement. The meat and eggs and milk are wonderful. They are also very healthy. But the experience itself is beautiful and messy and funny and rewarding and very real.
Raising Animals, General Considerations
Animals, especially dairy animals or egg laying poultry, are by far the biggest bang for your buck. Well not quite. Here’s the Steader list of what gives you the most on your home farm in relation to the money and effort you put in to it.
nut trees
dairy animals or egg-laying poultry (or lambs)
produce
Nut trees are great. Look into it a little bit, and you can almost certainly find a variety that grows well in your area, is pretty disease and pest free, and that gives you a nice harvest of easily storable nuts full of high-density macros year after year after year. In return, all you need to do is harvest the nuts every year , maybe add some nutrients to the soil, and plant the thing ten years ago.
There’s the rub.
Note: fruit trees are much the same, except you have to work even harder to find a variety that works in your area. You can probably find a fruit that is fairly pest free if you are willing to go for something unusual. But if you want the standard varieties, they are either going to be challenging to grow in your area, or attacked by pests, or both. Also fruit requires more effort to store. Planting nut trees and fruit trees is generational thinking. We encourage it once you have the short-term shored up.
So for this weekend, it comes down to the animals or the produce, or maybe a bit of both.
It’s true that you can get some vegetable produce with very little work if you pick the right variety. Pumpkins and winter squash, for example, can almost grow by themselves if you let them. For your very first foray into farming at all, produce will be the easiest way to get something. But you get LOTS more out of animals for the effort you put into them.
Animals need fed. If you have space with herbiage, you may still need some supplemental stuff. But if you have lots of grass, your animal feed are almost already paid for. If you don’t have the space, you’ll have to think carefully about the how much feed will cost you. (As an aside, unless you live somewhere where land is very cheap and very fertile, your savings in food won’t cover the cost of your land.)
Animals need water daily. Give them water daily or have a reliable source of water.
Animals will need some kind of shelter from the elements and from predators. Smaller animals especially.
Animals poop and get sick and die. If you want to eat them, you have to kill them. Especially for your smaller animals, paying someone to kill them for you is a vast money sink. If animals get sick, you either need to be comfortable doctoring them yourself or you need to pay a vet. For small animals like poultry, you should probably just kill them if you can’t cure them, the costs aren’t worth it otherwise.
The Storey’s Guides are considered the bible for home stockraising. Whatever animal you get, you should get a Storey’s Guide for it.
Good laying poultry is one of the very first things that any home farmer should consider. They do so much for you. If you are more established or more comfortable as a home farmer, you may want to consider adding a dairy goat to your repertoire. And you know what, let’s throw lambs in there too.
Animals have a personality, breeds are different, and different animals can develop what, for lack of a better word, we can call a culture that gets passed down from one generation to the next in a particular spot. So what you get here is general counsel, animals always surprise you.
Poultry
Chickens and ducks are both great. You will be able to find a number of folks in your area with practical experience plus lots of great information online.
Chickens are less messy and less noisy than ducks. They are also less smelly. Chicken poop isn’t great, but duck poop splatters. Chickens are also a little better adapted to feeding themselves. If you want ducks that mostly feed themselves, have that big pond or stream, or pay careful attention to the breed (Silver Appleyards seem to forage decently). Both chicken and ducks will eat lots of scraps of all kinds.
Ducks don’t have to have a water feature but they do like to clean themselves off so give them access to a children’s play pool or a water trough every now and again.
The right variety of duck lays more egg both in number and in weight than chickens do. We believe the right variety of duck gives you more egg per unit of feed. But you shouldn’t rely too much on that, that’s just a vague impression. None of us have tracked it closely. ( It is surprisingly hard to find breed information for any sort of animal that compares inputs to outputs.)
Chickens are on the whole are a little easier and probably the best first choice.
Both animals will scavenge your garden if allowed to wander through it freely throughout the day. Chickens love to peck at tomatoes. Ducks will mow bean plants to the ground if not kept out and new garden plants of any kind. We know from experience. Chickens will also be tempted to a degree. On the whole chickens are a safer option for limited access to the garden to help keep down pests.
Poultry need secure fencing especially at night to keep predators out. Chickens can fly higher than you think, low fencing won’t cut it. We’ve never had any trouble with ducks, but some folks have to clip their wings to keep them at home. Ducks can tolerate cold without a coop a little better than chickens.
Even if you give them feed, poultry that are allowed out and given scraps will have healthier and tastier eggs than you can buy commercially. You may have to hunt for the eggs, though, especially if you let the birds out before mid-morning. If you have a small space, poultry can do fine on feed with some scraps. If your birds won’t eat your scraps, try chopping them into smaller bits. If they still won’t, don’t insist. You can generally give them spoiled food, they can do fine on a pretty rough diet—and won’t eat if if their instincts tell them it will make them sick.
If you let the poultry free range, be aware that they can scratch holes in your lawn. Ducks especially can kill any part of your lawn that is slightly damp as they root around in the soil. Chicken tractors are a popular way of preserving grass quality, but don’t feel like you have to start with one. If you have to keep the birds in a more confined area, they will strip it down to bare dirt eventually. Standing around in mud and damp isn’t good for the animals, so in a confined area without good cover, like a crowded run, you will eventually need to throw down straw or leaves or grass clippings. Or anything else you can. Change it out as needed. It’s a great way to compost.
If you rely on feed, think about keeping a three month supplies of feed around somewhere secure. Galvanized garbage cans, for example. Think of it as a way of storing a three-month supply of fresh eggs.
Note: Farm-fresh eggs that haven’t been washed can also just sit out for well over a month and still be fine. There is also a water bath method that allows you store eggs long term.
Chickens have a bad habit of mobbing the outcast hen. ‘Hen-pecking’ is a thing and can get a hen killed if you don’t intervene. Male ducks (drakes) are rapey. It doesn’t do much harm, but it can be distressing to watch.
Roosters can be aggressive with children or even you, though not usually. Drakes less so.
You will probably get a little attached to them. This is a good thing. It is ok to like them and feed them and take their eggs and butcher them as needed. There is something intensely real about killing your own animals. Don’t expect dog-like pet behavior though. Chickens and ducks aren’t usually very affectionate. Ducks especially will more often than not be afraid of you . . . though if you raise them from ducklings they may go to the other extreme and hang out by your back door, pooping all over the step.
Poultry are messy to slaughter because of the feathers. Probably best to focus on eggs at the start if you don’t have experience butchering animals. Get an egg-layer or all-around breed.
If you don’t keep them cooped up until mid-morning, and maybe even if you do, you may have to hunt to find your eggs.
Note: a big pile of eggs like this means some of the eggs have been out for awhile. No problem! Until washed they keep just fine. You can crack them over a separate bowl one by one if you are concerned, that way you don’t ruin your whole baking project or your whole mess of scrambled eggs if one is off.
Once your poultry are established you can leave them for a few days or even longer if you have some kind of automatic or gravity feeder and waterer set up. You will want to have the set up running and all the bugs worked out a while before you actually go. If you are going to be gone more than just a few days, you’ll probably want a neighbor kid to check on them and their supplies. Apart from trips, you will need to attend to your poultry daily—food, water, look them over, let them in and let them out. It won’t take long, but it does have to be done.
Have realistic expectations. Poultry aren’t going to replace all your food needs. An adult even with a low-activity office job will need around 3 dozen eggs if that’s all they eat. On the other hand, eggs have everything you need and taste so good. If you were forced to have some meals of beans and rice, adding an egg to it will make it better to the taste and better for your health.
Think it over and decide if chickens (or maybe ducks) work for you.
Milk Goats
It’s my belief that dairy animals give you the most nutrition for what it costs to feed them of any animal. No one studies this like they should, but that is my belief.
Dairy cows are extremely productive. The milk is a revelation. You should try something more modest, though, if you are just getting your feet wet in home farming. Cows eat a lot, are too big to manhandle, and can outproduce what your family can drink.
Milk goats on the other hand are a much gentler project. They can live in a much smaller space (people say they can keep in a garage, thought we have our doubts). They are small enough to manhandle if you absolutely have to. They are thrifty. They have smaller teats so petite women and children have an easier time with hand milking them.
Goat milk tastes good but not quite as good as cow milk in most people’s opinion. Tastes differ. Some people who have dairy allergies can tolerate goat’s milk. Goat milk cream does not separate naturally, so you have to buy a device if you want cream or butter.
One goat is about right for a small family of milk drinkers. Goats are social creatures, so if you just have one it will get lonely. Hopefully your family spends time with it. Goats can be pretty affectionate, especially if you bring them little scraps or favorite weeds. You need very good fencing for goats, especially if lonely. A lonely goat gets bored and looks for things to do. A goat who gets out can absolutely trash a place.
Female goats aren’t smelly and their poop is dry. They are really quite clean.
For any dairy animal, standard milking is twice a day at fixed times. Mama adores her routine. You will have to dry up and breed the animal periodically to freshen up the milk (production slowly tapers after birth). If you want to avoid having to do it twice, you can mess around with keeping a kid with the goat half the time, but the bleating when they are apart the other half of the time will drive you batty. Some people say you can taper the animal down to a routine of just once a day, getting around half as much milk as otherwise, but with half the fuss.
Whatever your routine, though, you must keep it. If you want to go on vacation, you must have a neighbor who has learned how to milk and who is reliable. The milk goat doesn’t care if you have errands to run and things to do, if you don’t milk her she will suffer and possibly get a variety of infections or blocked teats. Milk animals might be best for households with several pairs of willing hands in them.
The advice you read sometimes act as if you had to achieve surgical cleanliness on your milking supplies. We just wash in soap and hot water in the ordinary way and never have any trouble.
We filter just using an old coffee filter.
We have never bothered pasteurizing.
If you feed the animal entirely (little to no pasture), do some research. Not all hays and not all feeds are the same. If you don’t have free grass or browse, your total costs will exceed the costs of buying milk. But it will taste better and be healthier. If you are using a pasture, pasture management helps a lot but in a lot of ordinary conditions, you can get by without it if you aren’t grazing up to the limit. Your results will not be as optimized, but usually still ok.
Whatever you need in the way of feed, try to have a three-month’s supply on hand. That’s a three-month supply of fresh milk!
You will want a shelter and some kind of milking station.
Lambs
If you have some grass, even an extra big back yard, raising a lamb in the spring and butchering in the fall is one the cheapest sources of meat around. And the most delicious. And extremely healthy. Costs like hamburger, eats like filet mignon.
Good fences are key, especially at night. Predators love lambs.
No feed supplementation necessary, if you have enough good grass. About 1/8 acre per lamb.
You get the lamb cheapest if you get them very young, but then you’ll have to bottle feed. Which is pure hi-jinks figuring out. Unless you already have the bottles and such, the cost is more or less a wash with buying the lamb weaned.
Butchering is physically easy. The fall lamb will still only weight somewhere in the 80 to 120 lb range, depending on the breed, which means you and a helper can lift and move the carcass without needing a big block-and-tackle or a tractor lift. There are plenty of instructions you can find online, the procedure is a lot simpler than you think. You are basically cutting off the skin and removing the internal organs without puncturing the bladder or the intestines. Plan on four hours your first time. If you don’t know cuts of meat, no sweat. Any ol’ hacked piece of unrecognizable meat lump will still be delicious, we know through experience. The big barrier here is the psychological one—doing the kllling. If you only have one lamb, well, lambs are herd animals, so you are likely to get attached to it. It’s ok to have a friend do the killing and you help with the butchering. You can also haul the lamb to an actual butcher, but you lost your cost savings that way. It’s a good idea to ask a hunter friend or someone who has butchered before to help your first time. Alternatively, ask if you can go along on their next hunt and help with the butchering.
Regardless, we really do believe that butchering and even killing your own animal is an important spiritual experience. It is not a clean, pretty experience. But there is a level of wisdom you unlock when you yourself participate in slaughtering a creature that you yourself have raised. It unlocks part of your internal emotional access to reality. Children should be raised around slaughtering and butchering.
If you have a little bit more space—among us we have at various times had a couple of self-sustaining lamb set ups that required hardly any effort.
Set up 1: an acre of good pasture with OK fencing, a small shelter with no walls, and a water trough. A llama who required some hay during a few months of the winter. (The llama was for predator protection). Buy 4-6 weaned lambs in the spring, butcher them when the grass dies in the fall. This was an extremely low effort operation, we visited about once a week (the trough had an automatic waterer). Worked well. Had to mow the grass a couple of times, we probably could have stocked more lambs. Winters were not too harsh, otherwise the llama would have needed more in the way of shelter. The only real effort was buying the lambs in the spring, butchering in the fall (you will need several people or a couple of days), and getting hay for the llama. You could dispense with the llama if you had great fences (coyotes and dogs can dig under, so you either need an electric wire, a bit of skirting, hardpan soil or concrete, or else a berm on one side of the fence—you might be ok without any of these if you walk the fence line frequently to look for digging, or if you have a good dog).
Set up 2: A little over a couple of acres of grass, very well fenced, attached to a small barn with a watering trough, and a big tree in the pasture for shade. Four ewes and about 6 to 8 lambs every year. Hair sheep, so we didn’t have to bother with shearing. Still pretty low effort, though we had to pay more attention to the fences. We also had to borrow a ram to breed every year, or haul the ewes to a ram. And hay and a bit of grain for the ewes during the winter.