Vegetarian Homesteaders - care to share? :)

Huh, I guess I have a nursing home for old biddies, because a few of my hens are 10 years old, and I have a duck that is 11.

Wonder if the vegans in the example given above have gone out to any hives, swarms, or nests and *explained* to the worker bees that they don't *have* to fly around all day pollenating stuff if they really don't want to. I"d like to see such a conversation.

The difficult part about extensive (non-animal) food raising without animals present would be the need for large quantities of off-farm inputs to develop and maintain soil fertility. Even with raising green manure crops and composting every scrap, you would be hard pressed, I think, to have a closed-loop cycle on your property, and would have to buy in either organic or chemical fertilizers. With animals present, their waste becomes your fertilizer, allowing you to grow (most of) their food and your own, maintaining a closed loop, which is the least expensive way.

If you buy high-quality, registered animals and sell to consumers wanting those genetics, excess animals are not an issue until the bottom drops out of the market. Right now, for instance, registered horses seem to be showing up for sale in many markets other than their breed registries - Craig's List, among other places.

Perhaps you would be more comfortable with non-breeding animals? It's not "natural," but there are no unwanted offspring, and the various rescue groups would bless you for taking in these animals. Of course, there's no milk without a breeding (although you could "milk through" and reduce the number of breedings needed.)

As for chickens, they lay eggs with no roosters present. I believe in day-ranging (locking everyone in a secure coop at night), but feel it is my responsibility to ensure that they are as safe as possible from predators. For me, "letting nature take its course" with unwanted roos and older hens would be abdicating my responsibility.

That said, your animal husbandry methods, should you decide to have animals, must be your decision, just as my dietary status is my business as yours is yours. The world has room for all of our differences, if we'll only respect them.

Heh Heh, if vegetables "screaming" bothers you; look into recent findings that some plants release scents when being attacked by insect predators to attract beneficial insects to come and get the plant predator insects.....

It is a toss up wether the first asparagus or new green beans is more tastey than a medium steak or a pork roast..I'm just glad I can have both!

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" As needs-MUST!!"--- in other words..a gal does what a gal has too!

I can certainly understand your problem, because I am an animal lover too, though not a vegetarian. I suppose when we are finally living on our property that my husband and I will have to deal with some of the same issues that you are struggling with now. My husband is one of those who as long as he doesn't have to kill it, he is ok with eating it. But he can't actually kill an animal for food, he says it would make him feel like a murderer. I have no problem with killing an animal for food or other humane reasons (ok, I feel guilt, and some sorrow for the animal giving its life to feed me but those feelings do not stop me from doing what needs to be done). But I also believe that just because an animal is being used for a purpose (food, skin, milk, fiber, etc)does not mean that animal should be suffering or unhappy during its lifetime. I think that treating them with kindness and love, and even developing an attachment bond is the least we can do for a creature that is ultimately going to be sacrificed so that I may live. If I have to deal with some pain at the loss of that creature, it is the penalty I pay. But they deserve a scratch and pat on the head, and gentle words, and good care while alive.

I understand why farmers say not to make a pet out of your food, it just makes it that much harder to do what needs to be done eventually. But not making a pet out of your food makes it easier for small cruelties to build into bigger ones, because after all, they are 'just food.' Don't get me wrong here, I am not speaking of sadistic treatment, such as some videos have exposed recently in the slaughter industry.

When it comes time to end their lives, I think it should be done with a few treats and gentle words thanking them for their lives and a quick bullet that they never even see. Not an electric prod goading them along, with a bunch of other terrified and highly stressed animals. It may not be the way for every farmer, and I can't pass judgements on a person doing what they need to do to provide for their family. But it can be the way for a small homesteader, who just wants to feel a little bit better about the choice to eat meat, and being responsible for the quality of life of the creatures raised as food. Animals feel pain, and love, and joy too.

Oh!!! About releasing spiders...I have been known to do that. Usually though, my dogs eat them before I have a chance to catch them. They hear me shriek and come running. Crazy dogs, lol.

We don't have ours in cages we keep them on the ground in pens. We let them out in range shelters during the day and keep them in the barn at night.

SERIOUSLY. I used to be part of a veggie message board. They had separate sections for vegetarians and vegans... The vegetarians couldn't stop foot in the vegan side of the board because of the insanity, and most of the vegans stayed in the veggie side too, because they also didn't want to deal with each other. Pretty terrible. I asked about vegans eating eggs, because I knew some vegans who had no problem eating eggs that came from happy free-range chickens... Oh, you would have thought that I suggest we murder babies for fun. It was like the apocalypse. I have some amazing vegan friends, but sadly, that's becoming rare.

Absolutely ridiculous! Really, though, you can feel bad about just about anything if you let yourself!!

Oh, they just think that you should leave the hives to themselves... Of course, when the hive is full of honey, the bees swarm and leave... But they believe that's how it should be... Really, it's not even worth your time trying to get into it with them.

That was a great post with a lot of good ideas, thanks.

That's just like the "chemical" or whatever that makes plants face toward the sun... Creeps me out a bit! I've never liked red meat in my life, so I suppose I was born a freak! My family is made up of all hunters, and they'd agree with you! My step-dad even owns a waterfowl & large game outfitting business. My extended family all hunt and raise their own meat. I'm certainly the weird one in the family! They don't feel like the meal is complete unless there's some kind of meat on the plate.

That's another issue I'm having at the moment... The person I'm thinking about starting this venture with eats meat. He says he doesn't want to eat anything that's been raised on the farm because it would make him feel bad. It would make me feel worse to support commercial farming and butchering methods... So I'm trying to take into consideration and thought whether I'd be willing to raise anything that was going to end up being slaughtered. Either way, we'd be contributing to an animal dying. One way is much more humane than the other though... I obviously don't want to be a part of any of it, but I'm going to live on a farm with him, it seems to me that I'm a part of it whether I want to be or not, so someone is going to have to choose the lesser evil... All of this has just been on my mind in the last day, having not considered it before... Decisions, decisions...

My guys are semi-veg and they are so sweet in that on their meat night they cook their own meat (if it's ground beef they cook it outside cuz the smell makes me gag).
I think that if we raised critters for OUR freezer my guys would be okay with me leaving for the day, I also think they'd hide all evidence to 'protect' my heart. My In-laws raise beef for the freezer, on butcher day my MIL goes to her sisters for the day, and once back home she says that she won't look out her kitchen window for several days because of the 'missing' cows. (last weekend I noticed that three cows are gone)

What's with Chickens these days? My Elders (7 yrs. old) all have good manners, my youngers (3 yrs. old and 8 months old) have no manners at all. I don't know where I went wrong with their rearing.

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"At The Worlds Beginning There Was A Mother"
~ Chinese Tao Te Ching~

Careful there... You don't want PETA getting mad at you for forcing your bees.

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I'm an environmentalist, left wing, Ron Paul loving Prius driver with a farm. If you have a problem with that, kindly go take a leap.

If you look on line you can order alpaca steaks and burgers. My neighbor is a vegetarian and he just grows and sells vegs.

I can 'testify' to the fact that you ARE NOT going to overfeed grain to dairy goats. At least not twice. We went through too many kamikaze dairy goats that defeated feed room defenses, till a foolproof system was found.

Only time these goats get grain is on the milk stanchion, and only a small amount mixed in with alfalfa pellets.

.........And, although I'll eat chicken, I don't eat old hens, or even roosters... they live out their lives till they keel over. If the SHTF, all Roos would disappear quickly (there's always a dozen or so young roos growing up that can't crow, giving away the homestead's location as a foodsource).

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Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. Seneca
Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival. W. Edwards Deming

I'm a third generation lacto-ovo vegetarian who is raising a 4th generation.

I don't feed my Nigerian Dwarf goats any grain at all - just alfalfa pellets. They can kid until they are 10-12 years old and while production usually peaks in the 3rd or 4th lactation I have a doe in my herds pedigree that set a one day milk test record at age 10!

Because I have good genetic lines I do get herd sire quality buck kids, and the ones that don't meet the standard are sold as wethers. I don't think I would sell a wether to someone that wanted them for meat, but once sold if that is what happened its not really any of my business and I'd rather not know. Of course Niggie babies at weaning age are still small enough and cute enough that no one ever looks at them and says - ooh dinner.

btw - there are Jersey dairies that have successfully switched to a grass based system for feeding. Production over the life of the animal is comparable to that of cows that are "pushed" probably because the productive lifespan is longer and the cows are generally healthier.

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Wags Ranch Nigerians


"The Constitution says to promote the general welfare, not to provide welfare!" ~ Lt. Col Allen West

From where I stand, not posting in a hog killing thread when you don't eat is a BIG difference than asking a bunch of people who grow much of their own food if WORMS HAVE FEELINGS.

Honestly I can't comment on anymore of your thread. I could not get past that statement. But I do wish you well in your endeavors and inside your head.

Thanks.

As one of the more vocal people against Peta & the like on here, I thought I handled myself pretty well in this thread, and offered some nice quiet advice to the person as she made some humorous comments, and didn't try to tell anyone what to do?

I wrote 3 different replies to the stuff in the middle of the thread, but erased all of them before posting, figured Cabin Fever has a hard enough job moderating.

There are a couple alpaca ranches around here, never really see where or for what reason they buy/sell. I suppose I just don't hang around the right circles.

--->Paul

*lol* Wellll, Paul. Let me just say that I myself feel the exact same way about PETA. I also erased two of my own posts that mentioned them. I don't know how people feel about them on this board, but I know mentioning the organization causes riots on other forums, so I tried to refrain.

I'll try to say nothing on the subject except for this: I find it quite upsetting when people who claim to love animals also claim to support this organization. It tells me someone hasn't been doing their homework.

That's as nice as I can be on the subject, so...

*insert "zipppppp" emoticon here*

A lot of us have to use that zip smiley when discussing a certain organization.

Silverflame, I am not allergic to honey bees but I AM allergic to yellow jackets. Since both are yellow and both will sting people often think they were stung by a "bee", and not realize that it was a yellow jacket. Yellow jackets actually do most of the "bee" stings.

So I often keep bees.

Also, I have heard that Nigerian goats were bred for milk production but in this country they are used as pets. It might be possible to use these miniature goats as milkers for one, and sell the babies as pets. They are less likely to be eaten than a full-sized wether.

OH! I see others beat me to it, LOL!

I've never been stung by anything but a yellow jacket, and my allergies as a kid weren't bad enough that I'd go into shock, but I would swell up like a marshmallow on and around where I was stung... It would just suck to get a hive without knowing if I was allergic... That could be a bad, bad thing.

It makes me hopeful to know that it's not uncommon for people to be allergic to yellow jackets and not honeys. I would LOVE to have some hives! I'm going to look into how much it costs to get tested... I wonder if they are able to test for all the different types (honey/YJ/wasp/bumble, etc). Will be interesting to find out.

My mother just started with the Nigies this year. They ARE adorable... Definitely food for thought!

Localized swelling the size of half a marshmallow is considered a faily normal reaction. I do this with bee stings and I tested negative for allergies.

A swelling the size of an orange is not. That is what I do with yellow jackets and I test positive for allergies for yellow jackets.

Yeah I swell more to like... the size of a honeydew... maybe a watermelon. *lol* But then again, I haven't been stung in probably 15+ years, so... who knows if the allergy has worsened or gotten better... Probably should know these things, so I know if I should be carrying an epi-pen with me, huh?