given the price of feed (and recent corn crop devastation) ?

cindy-e · #1 08/13/12, 12:59 PM

Besides chickens, what are your fav. small animals to raise? Are you able to feed them mostly from your farms? I would think you could with rabbits, maybe? anything else?

Cindyc.

AnnieinBC · #2 08/13/12, 02:04 PM

Sheep would be, if I could have them. But maybe you are thinking smaller animals than that?

As long as you can put away some hay, sheep should be fairly easy to keep year round.

Danaus29 · #3 08/13/12, 02:28 PM

Rabbits here. Used to be able to get enough greens to really cut back on the pellets. Working a lot in spring when everything was growing great really reduced that ability. I don't have a hay field. If I had even a small hay field I would be able to grow most of their food.

Dusky Beauty · #4 08/13/12, 03:12 PM

Geese. They mainly eat tall grasses and weeds. Duck breeds with good foraging instincts go really far on high bug populations and shorter grass and weeds. I am planning to install bright solar lights to draw bugs into my duck pens at night to gather some free, little effort protein sources to my duck eggs.

Danaus29 · #5 08/13/12, 03:41 PM

Japanese beetle traps work great for gathering bugs to feed to ducks. They have to be emptied daily and ducks will eventually get tired of them but the bugs freeze well for longer term storage.

blooba · #6 08/13/12, 04:14 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Danaus29

Japanese beetle traps work great for gathering bugs to feed to ducks. They have to be emptied daily and ducks will eventually get tired of them but the bugs freeze well for longer term storage.

remind me not to come over your house and rummage thru your freezer. Sounds interesting......lol

Danaus29 · #7 08/13/12, 04:44 PM

Unfortunately ducks are gone.

I think we got all the bugs out of the freezer.
At least it wasn't frozen mice to feed to snakes.

Alice In TX/MO · #8 08/13/12, 04:46 PM

Goats. Absolutely goats. We don't do birds.

TheMartianChick · #9 08/13/12, 05:30 PM

Other than chickens, the only other farm animals that we raise are quail. They don't eat much gamebird feed and I can grow amaranth and a few other things for them to eat (though I didn't this year). They produce eggs earlier and with far less feed than chickens do. I can also keep the flock small and then ramp it up to a larger number of birds in as little as 8 weeks in order to get more egg/meat production.

silverseeds · #10 08/13/12, 05:40 PM

I have chickens, rabbits and goats. Im in the high desert here, and its easiest for me to feed the goats. (I just get things off the side of the road as i drive up or down the canyon, Im working on growing their foods as well, but with a longer term plan like coppiced honey locust trees and some other productive bushes as the main components, VERY high production if down well)

My soil is poor but Im working on it, feeding the rabbits wont be a problem once i really get it going. chickens will probably always be the hardest for me, but within 1-2 years I should be feeding all three.

buspete · #11 08/13/12, 05:58 PM

Goats are the best bet. They are all about foraging.

Awnry Abe · #12 08/13/12, 09:23 PM

If you count goats, we raise meat goats, dairy goats, and rabbits in addition to chickens. Rabbits are fairly inexpensive to raise relative to the others listed in terms of infrastructure and recurring expenses, and feed. Dairy goats hit the $ scale quite a bit harder than any of the others.

gracie88 · #13 08/14/12, 05:51 PM

Bunnies are my favorite small meat animal, goats are my favorite smallish dairy animal, and ducks are my favorite egg-layers. Providing food for them would vary a bit depending on where you live. Here in the Willamette Valley, it rains all winter so my ducks can forage 100% of their diet for themselves from the abundance of snails, slugs and worms, nearly all year. I throw them a handful of grain on occasion just to keep them home and friendly but they don't need it. They wouldn't be as sustainable in a desert, I expect. If I grew enough clover to replace the alfalfa I buy for the bunnies and dairy goats, they would be sustainable as well, in theory, but that's a ways away.

julieq · #14 08/14/12, 06:19 PM

We raise miniature dairy goats and chickens. Our chickens aren't free range, but we could feed them out of our garden each year. Our little dairy goats can't be pastured because of the coyote and wolf problem here, but we have really good quality, fairly inexpensive alfalfa hay available a few miles down the road and they could do without grain if they had to.

FarmboyBill · #15 08/14/12, 06:36 PM

Id say goats also, tho im glad I dont have any anymore. Ive had up to 150 rabbits. I could never get back my feed bill if I lived another 40yrs. $15 a bag now. They hate corn, and alfalfa dont grow here.
I would say to a certain extent hogs and chickens. With chickens, if ya have 50 and they free range here, you should be able to get 10 eggs on a good day. If you have 100 your guaranteed 10 or better a day. Unfortunatly ive noticed that free range chickens tends to start around the chickenhouse and scratch the ground bare from there. My chickenhouse adjoins my yard. I had a lush yard once. No more. So, Id rather keep a couple doz and get a 10 eggs a day or more and feed them and let them scratch for whatever seems interesting without tearing up the barnyard.

Pigs, 3 THREE, can work well for a homesteader/small farmer that has woods with nut trees in it. Acorns ect. Again feeding them a gal a day shelled corn and let them rummage through the woods has worked for me several times. Towards the end I gave up haveing sows and raising litters. Too much work, too much feed, too much chance of things going wrong. So Now, I just raise 3 feeder pigs and sell them when there around 150/200lbs

Goats could work for me IF I didnt keep a buck, but I raised Nuibans, and theres no AI for goats here, and I didnt know anybody really close that kept a buck.

Hairsheep · #16 08/24/12, 08:51 AM

Have you googled Hair Sheep?
They grow to a good size faster than goats, are more parasite resistant, and do all this on just grass and weeds...Also, while googling, look up American Guinea Hogs, which also, eats a lot of grass, bugs, snakes and of course nuts of all kinds in the woods...Geese are also a good choice, as they eat mainly just grass.
Rabbits will eat old bread, tater peelings, dried corn, and any old veggie you are tossing out and gain weight.