Food security. The term means different things to different people. One definition involves having a reliable source of basic foods and not having to worry about going hungry. Another requires the food to be of sufficient quantity and quality to meet your dietary needs and satisfy your food preferences. Still other definitions specify that the food be nutritious, safe, and healthful. And some definitions incorporate the concepts of local self-sufficiency and environmental sustainability.
Taken together, these various definitions point in one direction: Grow your own. And unless you are a vegetarian, that means raising livestock. As a lot of people are learning, you don’t need to live on a farm to raise food animals. A pair of rabbits in the carport or on the back porch will provide a year-round supply of meat while taking up hardly any space at all. A beehive or two will give you healthful honey while pollinating your garden. A few hens will provide you with fresh eggs while living happily in one corner of the garden. When I started out with livestock, I lived on approximately one acre on which I raised a variety of rabbits, chickens, turkeys, ducks, and geese, along with a big garden and a small orchard. The garden and orchard benefited from the manure produced by the animals, and the animals benefited from surplus produce gleaned from the garden. Best of all, my family enjoyed food security of the highest order.
Today I live on a farm, where we have space to raise more food animals. We keep dairy goats for their delicious milk, and on occasion use surplus milk to raise a calf for awesomely tasty homegrown burgers or to raise piglets that fill our freezer with succulent pork. But you don’t have to live on a farm, or even on one acre of land, to produce nutritious, safe, healthful eggs, milk, and meat. This book is here to point the way.
Aside from supplying wholesome eggs, milk, meat, and honey, keeping farm animals has another health benefit. Observing the sight and sounds of the animals in your yard offers a refreshing, stress-reducing change from the scurry of modern life. Provided you leave the cell phone behind, doing barnyard chores is a great way to take time out for relaxation and quiet enjoyment. Since livestock must be cared for daily, they pull you away from your indoor activities and force you to get out for a little exercise and fresh air. I often spend long days in the office and look forward to doing evening chores that not only let me stretch my muscles but also help clear my head.
Educational value is another important reason for raising backyard livestock. Too many kids today believe eggs come in plastic cartons and milk comes from a cardboard box. Keeping animals for food helps kids learn, hands on, the basics of producing their food. As any farm family will avow, helping to care for animals at home is a wonderful way for children to learn responsibility, patience, dedication, and compassion. And you could find no better way than raising barnyard animals for children to learn about the natural processes of procreation, birth, and death. As a wonderful bonus, children who grow up around farm animals are generally healthier than children who grow up isolated from the land.
A big question livestock novices frequently ask is, “Can I save money by growing my own _______ (fill in the blank)?” One thing is for certain: It’s not about money. If you take into consideration the cost of building facilities and acquiring stock, as well as feeding and otherwise maintaining your animals, and especially if you include the amount of time you put into the endeavor, you cannot produce your own meat, milk, eggs, and honey as cheaply as you can purchase them from a big-time industrialized producer. If, on the other hand, you are buying quality products from small-scale producers, you can come pretty close to matching or beating their price.
So each chapter of this book includes a discussion on whether or not you can save money by growing your own, taking into consideration mainly the cost of feed, which is the major expense of keeping livestock once your animals have been acquired and their housing established. Even if your chosen endeavor turns out not to be a spectacular financial success, if you take into consideration all the advantages of growing your own—including the satisfaction of putting healthful, wholesome food on the table and the fun you have doing it—you should be able to produce your own food at a reasonable price.
The marvelous rewards that come from raising your own food animals don’t come without a price, however, and here I’m not referring to money. For one thing, barnyard animals require constant care, day after day, week after week. No matter what else may be going on in your life on a particular day, or how tired you are at day’s end, you must make time to take care of your livestock. Although daily chores don’t involve a lot of time or hard work, they are an important responsibility. If you have trouble finding a substitute caretaker for times when you must be away, you may soon feel tied down by your animals.
But that’s mainly a matter of attitude. Many’s the time I have felt like not doing barnyard chores, only to have my spirits lifted when I got to the barn and was greeted by animals eagerly awaiting my arrival. Sometimes when I turn down an invitation from a friend or relative because I can’t leave my animals for extended periods of time, I’m exhorted to “get rid of all those animals” so I can “be free.” Anyone who could say such a thing doesn’t have livestock of their own; my friends who do have barnyard animals would never consider suggesting anything of the sort. Keeping livestock gives us freedom of a different kind—freedom to eat what we choose, produced by animals raised the way we choose to raise them.
Other downsides that can be part and parcel of keeping backyard livestock include the need to deal with manure, odor, noise, flies, and complaining neighbors. All of these potentially negative factors can be handily dealt with through proper management. I consider manure to be a bonus rather than a disadvantage because I am a gardener, and manure makes outstanding compost that grows a bounty of scrumptious vegetables. My barnyard animals provide me with a constant supply of manure. Odor-free composting techniques are covered in such books as The Complete Compost Gardening Guide, by Barbara Pleasant and Deborah L. Martin. If you are not a gardener, surely you know someone who is who would be delighted to have a source of free, natural fertilizer and more than likely would be happy to clean out your barn to get it.
Properly dealing with manure automatically solves the problems of odor and flies, which leaves us next to consider noise. Barnyard noise is particularly problematic because not everyone considers it a problem. When I hear my neighbor’s cow bellow, I know her calf is being weaned or the cow is ready to be rebred. I once had a neighbor who, when she heard a neighbor’s cow bellow, became so alarmed she called in a vet at her own expense. Now that can get pretty annoying if you are the cow’s owner.
Even if your chosen endeavor turns out not to be a spectacular financial success, if you take into consideration all the advantages of growing your own you should be able to produce your own food at a reasonable price.
A crowing rooster is another noise-maker that not everyone considers to be a problem. I enjoy hearing the sound of a cock crow, but I no longer have to worry about neighbors complaining about it. That’s one of the reasons I moved from one acre to a farm, while some of my chicken-keeping friends have been in constant battles, sometimes ending up in court, over their crowing roosters. Laying hens don’t make nearly as much racket as roosters, although the occasional cranky neighbor may take exception to their cackling. If barnyard noise is a potential problem, consider silent animals, such as honey bees, rabbits, or Muscovy ducks. The latter are sometimes called quackless ducks because their sound is so muted it can be heard only at close range.
Unless your interest is in fresh eggs or honey, raising food animals means you must be prepared for the eventuality that one day animals will be butchered. Even a dairy animal involves meat production, since in order to give milk the female must give birth, giving you an annual crop of young ones to deal with. Butchering an animal you raised yourself can be traumatic if you, or especially your child, have become attached to the animal. How well I remember the rabbits our family had when I was little. I had thought they were my pets until the day I came home from school and found them hanging from the basement rafters to be skinned. I can’t tell you how betrayed I felt. I eventually got over it, and today rabbit is one of my favorite meats. But as a child, I would have appreciated knowing the rabbits our family was raising, that I had spent so much time playing with, were destined for the dinner plate. With a tactful approach, no child is too young to learn.
The cardinal rule among those of us who raise animals for meat is to never name one. Well, that’s not quite realistic, especially when you have more than one and need to differentiate between them. But at least avoid giving them affectionate petlike names. Instead use either numbers or names that serve as a reminder of the animal’s purpose in life, such as Finger Lickin’, Hambone, or Sir Loin.
Dealing with butchering involves not only overcoming the emotional aspects, but also following the prescribed procedures that result in safe, tender, tasty meat. Educate yourself by reading a book such as Basic Butchering of Livestock & Game, by John J. Mettler, Jr., and if the process sounds like something you’d rather not get involved with, find out ahead of time if you can count on someone else to do it for you. That someone might be a friend or neighbor raising similar livestock, or perhaps a professional slaughterhouse.
Not all slaughterhouses accept all kinds of livestock. Some take only poultry, whereas others take only larger animals. Even a custom butcher who handles larger stock might have a seasonal schedule: for example, taking in only game animals during the hunting season. When you find a slaughterhouse you plan to use, seek endorsements from past customers. We once had a pig butchered by a shop we had not used before, and they included far too much fat in the ground sausage (which you can understand when you realize that such a shop charges by the pound). As a result, 1 pound of sausage cooked down to less than ½ pound of meat, and—since fat does not keep as well as lean meat—a lot of the sausage went rancid in the freezer before we could use it up.
Perhaps you don’t want to get involved in raising meat at all. Consider that right from the start. If you want a cow or goat for milk, the animal will lactate only as a result of giving birth, so you will have one or more babies to deal with in the future. If you don’t raise them for meat, what you will do with them? If you raise chickens or other fowl for eggs, one of the birds may eventually steal off into some secluded place to lay her eggs and hatch a batch of chicks, thus greatly increasing your backyard population. The offspring might be considered a bonus if raised for meat, a burden if not.
One of the big advantages to raising livestock solely for meat is that the project can be short-term. A batch of broiler chickens, for example, can be raised and butchered all within 8 weeks’ time. A lamb can be ready to turn into chops in six or seven months. These short time frames give you a chance to decide whether you like raising livestock at all. If the answer is yes, you then have the choice of doing another short-term meat project in the future or engaging in a long-term project involving breeding your own animals.
Once you’ve decided which animals to keep, educate yourself further about what’s involved. Read not only this book, which provides an overview of each type of food animal, but also some of the books mentioned in the Resources section on page 333, which offer more in-depth details on each specific breed. Subscribe to a periodical dealing with your chosen breed. Network with others who raise the breed by joining a local club, if one exists, and regional or national breed clubs. Visit the fair in your county, and perhaps in surrounding counties, to meet people who have the breed that interests you.
A super place to gather information is at a 4-H show, where the kids involved are well educated about their animals and eager to share their knowledge. Nothing pleases children more than the opportunity to show an adult how smart they are. The people you meet during your networking will become invaluable when you have questions about such things as how to harvest honey, milk a cow, or trim a goat’s hooves.
The same places that offer good networking opportunities are also excellent sources for locating livestock to purchase. Avoid purchasing stock at an auction or sale barn, where animals are constantly coming and going. You will have no idea where your animal came from, and you can’t tell how healthy or unhealthy it may have been to start with or what kind of diseases it may have been exposed to along the way. The last thing you want is for your first livestock experience to turn into a fiasco involving multiple expensive visits with the veterinarian, administering medications to a reluctant animal, and in the end possibly losing the animal despite your best efforts.
If possible, buy animals from someone who lives nearby. Livestock purchased close to your home already will be adapted to your area, and you will have someone to turn to if you need help later on. When you buy from a local breeder, you can see for yourself whether the animals come from a clean, healthful environment and whether the breeding population has the proper conformation. If you are buying a female breeding animal—a cow, ewe, sow, or doe (goat or rabbit)—the seller may have a male animal to which you could breed her when the time comes. Keeping a rabbit buck for breeding is no big deal, but keeping a bull, ram, boar, or goat buck just to breed one or two females is neither safe nor cost-effective.
Raising a rare breed for food may seem contradictory, but doing so supports breeders and encourages them to perpetuate that breed.
An excellent place to find local sellers of livestock is the farm store. Many farm stores maintain a bulletin board where breeders may advertise livestock for sale, and the clerks can tell you who buys feed for the species you are seeking. The county Extension office is another possible source of information, although some agencies are more active and knowledgeable than others. Larger livestock operations might advertise in the Yellow Pages of your phone book, in the newspaper classified ads, or in the freebie shopper newspapers that abound in every community. The farm store and Extension office can also tell you if your area has a club or other interest group dedicated to your breed. Also check with the national association that promotes your chosen breed or species, most of which maintain a membership list that is available to the public. Some organizations publish their membership list on websites to help you locate members nearest you.
If you are interested in a less common breed, contact the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy or Rare Breeds Canada for their periodically updated list of breeders. Raising a rare breed for food may seem contradictory, but doing so supports breeders and encourages them to perpetuate that breed; if nobody wants these animals, nobody will continue producing them. Besides, taste tests prove time and again that rare breeds are often the best tasting, primarily because they have not been selectively bred for rapid growth.
If you have difficulty finding what you want locally, cast your net a little farther afield. When purchasing animals from a distance, try to travel to the seller’s location to view the breeder stock and pick up your purchase. No matter how carefully animals are transported, shipping always involves certain risks.
We have occasionally purchased a calf from a dairy in the next county and transported it home in our pickup camper, and we never had a problem until one extremely hot day. During the 45-minute drive home we stopped to offer the calf some water. It was too frightened to drink, so we decided the better plan was to get home fast and get it off the hot truck. By the time we arrived home the calf was nearly prostrate from heat and dehydration. After a good hosing down with cold water and several gallons of Gatorade, the calf was fine, but the incident gave us quite a scare. Since then if we have to transport livestock in the summer, we do so in the cool hours of early morning or late evening.
If you cannot pick up your purchase in person but must arrange to have it shipped, have a clear written understanding with the seller regarding who bears the risk if the animal gets sick or dies. The stress of long-distance travel compromises an animal’s immune system, risking infection during travel or on arrival at its new home.
Before bringing home your first animal, have everything ready for it. A little advance preparation will smooth the way.
Ensure family support. Check with all members of your family to see how they feel about having livestock in your backyard. It’s always best to have everyone’s full support, especially when you may need a substitute to do your daily chores whenever you must be away. If not all members are involved in maintaining the livestock, strife can result when the uninterested members feel the others spend too much time at the barn, yet they share in the bounty. By contrast, relations in families in which everyone is involved in some phase of animal care are usually harmonious. In our family, my husband and I normally do chores together; we each have certain responsibilities, but each of us pitches in for the other when need be. We enjoy our time together walking to and from the barn, but at the barn, we devote our full attention to the animals.
Establish caretaking responsibilities. Establish a caretaking schedule and decide who in your family will do what chores daily, weekly, monthly, and seasonally. Children, for instance, can be in charge of the daily routines of feeding, milking, and gathering eggs; these simple tasks will help them learn about responsibility. Adults or older teenagers should probably be involved in the less frequent but more difficult tasks, such as vaccinating, cleaning stalls, or attending births.
Check zoning regulations. Every area has a slightly different set of zoning laws, which may prohibit you from keeping certain species, limit the number of each species you may keep, regulate the distance animal housing must be from nearby human dwellings or your property line, or restrict the use of electric fencing.
I saw firsthand how zoning works on my little one-acre farmstead, which was rezoned after I moved there. Although my poultry activities were grandfathered in—meaning the authorities could not make me get rid of the birds I already had—I was not allowed to increase the population. Now the nature of raising chickens is that after the spring hatch you have more, and as the year progresses and you butcher some, you have fewer. Complying with the new law meant I would not be able to hatch and raise young chickens for meat. I managed to prevail as long as I lived there, but not without hassles from neighbors and occasional visits from the authorities. If you plan to raise livestock on property you have yet to purchase, check not only existing laws but also proposed changes. If existing zoning laws are not livestock friendly, several websites explain how to get the laws changed.
Prepare facilities. Once you learn of any zoning regulations that will influence where on your property you may keep animals, prepare their housing. Most animals require all-weather housing. If your area has particularly hot days or cold days, take those extremes into consideration right from the start, or you may never get around to providing proper housing. If you are starting out with babies, remember they will grow; make sure your facilities are big enough to handle them when they mature. If you wish to breed your stock to raise future babies, chances are pretty good you’ll want to keep one or more of the babies, so allow space for expansion. Since things have a way of taking longer than expected, have your facilities ready and waiting before you bring home your first animal. Provide adequate feed and water stations.
Lay in a supply of feed. Unlike wild animals, which are adept at balancing their own nutritional needs, domestic animals rely on us to furnish all the nutrients they need. The best choice for a beginner is to use bagged feed from the farm store. If you are concerned about what’s in the ration you can opt for an all-natural formula. If you prefer certified organic feed, expect to pay 50 to 100 percent more. After you become knowledgeable about your chosen species’ habits and dietary needs, you will be in a better position to develop an alternative ration, should you so desire. Meanwhile, if the bagged feed you will be using is different from what the animal has been eating, purchase some of its usual feed from the animal’s seller. Gradually mix in greater quantities of new feed with the old to avoid an abrupt change that can cause digestive upset in an animal already stressed from the move.
Install sturdy fencing. Secure the livestock area with a stout fence that not only keeps in your livestock but also keeps out predators. When most people hear the word predator, they think of wild animals such as foxes, raccoons, or coyotes. But the number one predators of domestic livestock are dogs. Our neighborhood was once terrorized by a dog that killed countless chickens (including some of mine), a calf, a couple of sheep, and dozens of 4-H rabbits. When the animal-control officer finally caught and euthanized the dog, the owner was furious that her children had been deprived of their beloved pet. Sometimes a predator dog is not the neighbor’s but your own. I’ve heard many a tale of dogs that got along well with poultry, and even guarded them, then for reasons only the dog could know eventually went on a rampage and killed the birds.
Most livestock books recommend farm fencing of one sort or another, which securely confines stock and excludes predators, but may not be legal in more populated areas. The type of fencing you use must be acceptable in your area, both legally and aesthetically. To make your fence animal safe as well as publicly acceptable, you may have to fudge a bit by camouflaging farm fence to look like something else from the outside; for instance, having small-mesh woven wire on the inside with attractive post and rail board fencing on the outside. Attractive fencing that blends well with the neighborhood landscape is more likely to be acceptable to neighbors.
Inform your neighbors. Let your neighbors know about your plan to raise livestock. Explain that you are taking great pains to keep your animals from getting into other people’s yards and to keep other people’s animals out of your yard. Describe what you are doing to maintain clean housing and minimize odors and flies. By letting the neighbors in on your plans, you are less likely to hear complaints from them later. You might even get them involved by asking for their input and advice. Perhaps they’d be willing to help out, for instance when you go on vacation, in exchange for fresh eggs from your chickens, fresh milk from your cow or goat, or barnyard compost for their garden. Who knows—you might pique their interest enough that they’ll want backyard farm animals of their own.