What livestock is "self sufficent"

As for predators...dont you have coyotes and bears?? We sure do.
I have had flocks of birds wiped out by coon, possum and mink

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I'd rather have one Chewbacca than an entire clone army.

The problem is that any domestic livestock that I'm thinking of off the top of my head that has the vigor to thrive unattended has the potential of becoming a feral nuisance and potentially invasive species that could/would compete with and possibly wipe out the local wildlife.

Rabbits have been known to do VERY well when left unattended, for example...but could do irreparable damage to the local ecosystem. As do feral populations of pigs, goats, sheep, cattle and even poultry, in some areas.

It ceases to be livestock if you are not caring for it on a somewhat regular basis.

If stocking up on wildlife species and filling your freezer in season is not an option, perhaps you should consider keeping a pair or trio of rabbits wherever you are now for year-round meat production.

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Rachel Haiku Heritage City Farm

Rabbits!! If fenced in properly (bury the fence atleast 1 foot) and protected from flying predators, and with enough space and food (clover and such) and water, they would make it for a week or two on their own.

Yup animals left alone will mostly die, just as most wild animals die. Many more wild critters die young than grow to adulthood. If you can stand most of your livestock (if not all) dying of disease or predators then no problem.

If you can protect against predators, as with an exotic animal fence, provide plenty of food water and shelter, animals can go a lot more without tending.

Feral hogs is your solution. You will have escapees naturally. In Hawaii, there are feral chickens and hogs. In New Zealand, you're allowed to hunt year round since the Europeans imported tons of livestock and wild game then released them only to find out that they're overgrazing the land and have no natural predators. They now have feral goat, hog, elk, spotted deer, one of those super small deer..dik diks?, feral sheep (the NZ main source of agriculture is the sheep) and a lot of other exotic livestock who just require grass to live on.

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Ted H

You may all go to Hell, and I will go to Texas.
-Davy Crockett

Yes the predator for a 50 lb goat would be a dog, coyote and not sure what else you might have in WV. Goats will not drink dirty water, will not eat dirty hay. So it is cruel to me to have them waiting around for a human to come and fix things and there is no one there.
Raise them for food but treat them humanely while doing it. Or else you are butchering a sickly stick of an animal and you will be lucky to get 5 pounds of meat.

I think it is cruel to have an animal stuck and dying in a fence for a week or two, or having the waterer break and dying of thirst.

If you cannot take care of the animals then why have them? I do not think it is cruel to eat animals, but why treat them poorly until butchering time? No one is saying you must go there daily, read them a bedtime story and tuck them in each night. You need to provide basic care and feed.

Either hunt well and freeze it, or wait until you can actully live there.

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Yup that's the other way I would go, put out plenty of water, and feed for wild deer and hogs.. Feeders are available, and make your place a nice place for them to move into and stay...

I know my mom does this, and she could have all the venison she wanted, right from the back yard. She simply spreads cheap deer corn out now and then and keeps a water tank out there with clean water about 100yds from the house.

Myself it'll be 2-5 years, and I'll not keep livestock until I live there.. For the reasons folks have repeatedly mentioned, and I have no desire for 8' game fences and auto waterers and whatnot I would need to leave then unattended.. And if they were doing well then there's a the two legged thieves to worry about.

Cows can be kept if their is sufficient food and water, brother used to keep a herd of cattle on his land and he lived 150Mi. away.. He built a self feeder on side of a barn that supplied 30 head of cattle with hay for two weeks at a time in the winter...An elderly gent living next to his land would've called the law if anyone tried to appropriate some of them...Sounds to me like alot of appropriating homesteaders above are not the kind of people you would want for neighbors..Just recently there was several loose cattle in the neighborhood here and no one tried to rustle them instead we kept asking til the owner turned up and rounded them up and took them home..

When they closed the open range in this part of the Ozarks our old razorbacks were very hard to keep in (40 acre woods pasture) this was solved by taking a piece of #9 wire and sharpening then inserting same in the bridge of their nose and bending into a loop and twisting the ends together..I called them bangles, they kept the grown hogs from inserting their nose under the fence and raising the woven wire.. You might keep a couple in ten or fifteen acres this way without constant attention, just don't expect a large return..You could install a deer feeder to scatter corn to supplement their foraging..It can be done just don't expect a big return, though brother did o.k. with his cattle ( lots of pasture and live water)..good luck

Don't know where or what kind of goats people on here have. The goats I was raised up around would eat and drink anything they could get hold of, up to and including your car. They were released in the mountains in herds. The old billies took reasonable care of them. They survived and multiplied on what they found on the mountain.

I always wanted to try Guineas this way. I've seen flocks of hundreds of them running around all over Africa and they seem to manage in what is a very predator rich environment. Course you'd probably have to harvest them with a shotgun but that works as well. There is one suburb of Houston that has a resident Guinea population and they haven't been able to get rid of them.

It is quite common to leave your cattle on summer pasture in WV. Most farmers have land high up in the mountains where you park your cattle for the summer months and only check on them every 1-2 weeks. We've done it for over 7 years and have had very minimal problems.

We call them in with sweet feed when we come, check them over, check fence, check food and water supply and leave. The farmer next to us calls his in with salt, but we think salt is a necessity not a treat like sweet feed. He checks his about every 3 weeks.

Come October, November, you take them off the high mountain pasture, before it snows so you can get them out and put them to where you can get to them. So we take them to a lower farm where we check them once a week. IT works for us and we have had very few losses. It's common in WV.

However, we have over 100 acres, the farmer next to us, has over 1000. Ours is all fenced. Good next fences are a necessity and so are good neighbors. We cultivated good relationships and they call us if they spot a problem or a potential problem. We would do the same and be glad to.

Ranging cattle on 100+ and 1000+ acres is not the same as asking what can survive on 3 to 10 fenced acres.

I doubt there is anyone here who has successfully "ranged" cattle on a 3 acre lot and checked them every week or 2.

And all the critters mentioned who have gone feral have done so in areas with little to no predation. WV has LOTS of natural predator, plus roaming dogs, plus neighbors,

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A ship in the harbor may be safe, but that's not what ships are built for

actually no.
feral hogs are all over the place (including canadia) w/ all kinds of predators from bears to wolves to alligators.
spanish/brush goats are feral all over the southwest in the presence of coyotes, bobs, mt lion & bear.
there are feral cattle in south TX amid mt lion, coyote & in some place alligator.
there are feral rabbits near Herriman UT and feral waterfowl (runner ducks, toulouse geese, etc) all up & down salt lake & utah valleys. all from pet dumps & all despite healthy populations of fox, coon, coyote, bobs, mt lion & raptors.

And I bet you every one of those populations will at some point cost tax payer dollars to control!

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Rachel Haiku Heritage City Farm

Pops2, you are right, hogs do go feral very well, which is why it is illegal in most states to release them. Odds are good you won't get caught, but there's a hefty fine in plenty of states if you do.

But I'd bet any mount of money you'd like, all the rest of the feral populations you mentioned aren't self-sustaining. They all get regular infusions of fresh stock from dumps and escapes. Even mustangs (and most mares I've known are more protective of their newborns then most cows I've known, which I would imagine would give a higher survival rate) get new blood all the time. Go to the BLM adoption page and you'll see paints, appaloosas and drafts. They don't adopt out the ones they round up that already have brands on them.

I've lived by a couple of big parks and preserves that seasonally had pretty nice populations of domestic ducks and rabbits and such. But even with a retiree here and there feeding them, come about February and those critters were pretty scarce. Following Easter, you'd see all new faces.

What decent stockman wants to keep tossing critters out just to get the (maybe) 5% that will live for a while? Forget any other factor - it's bad business. A poor economical move. Cheaper to buy meat.

And we all know predators go to where the pickings are easy.
As soon as they were illegal to shoot and the population started to recover from DDT, NYC has got itself a decent population of Peregrines. Because of the pigeons. Lots of those birds aren't just street rats. They have a band or their parents did. Pigeon racing and fancies are really, really popular in the city. And so the hawks came.

If Peregrines will re-populate NYC, it's a pretty safe bet that some kind of predator will be delighted to help itself to good meat conveniently locked onto 3 acres for it's hunting ease.

And still, automatic systems clog, people steal and vandalize, and fences can entrap. It's just a bad idea.

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A ship in the harbor may be safe, but that's not what ships are built for

actually i've gotten permission before to take some of the waterfowl.
in most places the goats & cattle are subject to being caught by landowners & sold to slaughter.
but the hogs are already costing tax dollars. they seem to be the only species that is REALLY dangerous from an environmental standpoint. the others merely compete w/native species. in that regard I am opposed to establishing feral populations of anything (& introducing nonnative wildlife as well).

i'm not saying it's good idea for everyone.
but it could be a good idea for someone that has the means & makes the effort to provide protection. i am also saying the predation risk could be overstated.

I'm really big on that if you put enough effort into it, anything at all can be done.
But looking at it from a strictly economical standpoint it just doesn't make sense. The money, the effort .. it would be poor business. And when you add in the potential for unnecessary suffering .. ug.

And West Virginia is very rich in wildlife. It just makes so much more sense to plant food plots and manage land for wildlife, he already hunts, just needs to preserve the meat, doing that would increase the value of the property. It really does seem like trolling to insist that THIS is an un-doable option, what can I fence onto 3 acres and have live and produce for me.

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A ship in the harbor may be safe, but that's not what ships are built for

Hogs are about the only domestic animal that are self-sustaining. Other domestic animals still depend on humans even if they do not belong to anyone. Chickens, ducks, guineas, geese, cattle, goats, sheep cannot survive without mans help. They are not considered really feral if they live near and depend on man for their food and protection.

As with other animals, different breeds probably have different personalities.

The 2 I had on pasture didn't escape. There was no signs that they had tried to root under the fence anywhere. They were on 5 acres that they shared with about 20 goats, 2 donkeys, 60 muscovies, bunches of chickens, and several LGD's.

My fence is goat fencing with a string of barb wire running along the ground at the bottom of the fence. The barb wire might be why they kept their snouts away from that area, but it seems like there would have been some sign on their "learning experience" if they had tried to get out.

The only time I had a problem was when a tree went down on the fence. It wasn't too bad a problem since I have double fence all the way around. I didn't take down the old fences when I put up the new. The new fence was set in a few feet from the old one so there's a "walk way" between the fences. If they would have got past the first fence (they didn't), the second one would have delayed any escape.

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