Favorite meat animal

I have a variety of animals, but if I had to only have 1 species it would have to be sheep. I have Katahdin/Katahdin crosses, they are very hardy, parasite resistant, extremely easy to care for and almost free to keep during the growing season as long as there is good pasture. No wool, so no paying a shearer. The meat is awesome. I use the "regular" cuts of chops and roasts as usual, but I also use the less meaty stuff in stews, soups and casseroles. Some people tan the hides to make rugs - I have a couple of people who I have given hides to at butchering time. Lamb meat brings a very good price at retail if you have room for a decent sized flock. I just keep enough to keep us and the canines in meat...

Very close behind is pigs, but that is because I actually like them. I love watching them and they can be very amusing to interact with. For me they are quite a lot more expensive to keep than the sheep, though, as I have to feed them store-bought ration supplemented with some garden excess, kitchen trimmings and the occasional excess milk from the goats or eggs from the chickens - these last are not very frequent or copious though, so they are not a "cheap to keep" option for me.

I home-butcher, so I don't have the processor fees. However, if you are selling meat by the cut you have to use a USDA inspected processor. The other alternative is to sell the whole, live animal and let your purchaser do their own butchering, or deliver it yourself to the processor, where the purchaser pays for the butchering.

Mary

I like sheep. The lambs are cute and delicious. I like pigs too but they aren't as cute to watch playing, and they don't smell as good.

I would put dexter cows at the top of my list with my hogs a close second. Cows because I like beef! The Dexters that I have are exactly how the breed is described on the rare breeds board. Low maintenance...however if you are harvesting hay etc for them they are a lot more overhead.

Hogs I'm really just getting started with but we butchered a smallish one for smoking last week. This was for a church function and it got rave reviews...I thought it was awesome as well!

Honestly chickens would have to be very close to the top of the list as well. Choose your breed wisely and they will provide eggs and meat.

In my opinion rabbits are the most work per pound of meat on my homestead. Easier to butcher than chickens but more time consuming and tempermental than chickens.

Looking forward to eating out first Muscovy ducks in the next couple of weeks. I MIGHT add them to my list if eating them ranks with raising them.

Here is another thought for you. Someone mentioned venison. I do hunt for deer as I love venison. I also raise squirrel dogs to hunt with. Selling pups and started dogs add to my homestead income. Plus my family enjoys many meals a year as the 'fruits' of their labors. You could accomplish the same thing with beagles if your rabbit population is good. What I'm saying is don't over look hunting as an excellent source of meat, income and of course recreation.

Mike

Pork is #1 here, chicken second, beef third, we like variety and raise all three. Rabbit is to filling for me One rabbit leg is all I can eat and I feel overfull..Deer in season is the tallowy tasting meat here , just have to go to the woods on property and wait on it..So no lamb or goat here.

Beautiful sheep. Breed? I like sheep but not to eat. I like rabbit best over all. Chicken next. I raise yellow perch in my greenhouse and like that too....James

1. Pork
2. Chicken
3. Beef
4. Fish
10. Turkey ( 2times a year) Turkey doesn't taste the same as it did years ago.
Never tried goat but am willing, along with rattlesnake.

My favorite is Maine Lobster, but I haven't had much luck raising them in Nebraska.
Most economical- deer
Really tasty= beef pork and lamb
Best tasting wild game= Pheasant
Best fish= Halibut, again an extinct species in Nebraska

Another vote for sheep, so long as the predator problem is addressed. Ours don't need any grain, just whatever they graze/browse, and hay in the winter. Only a primitive shelter needed, too, since ours like cold weather and lamb out on pasture around April. Depending on the breed, both the lamb and mutton can be mild and delicious. We just had sausages from a 5 year old ram - fantastic!
We keep chickens, too, and love both the meat and the eggs, but have to budget for feed for them all year round.

Deer! You don't have to buy feed, etc. All you have to do is shoot one during hunting season. Venison is delicious, especially venison breakfast sausage and ground venison (although hubby is partial to minute steaks in gravy). I haven't bought beef in years because we prefer venison.

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http://hickahala.blogspot.com/

We raise sheep, pigs, chickens, ducks, young beef, rabbits and have raised turkeys. The turkeys were no more trouble than the chickens, except that they could not be allowed to free range. There are so many wild turkeys here that the loose ones just took off with the other herds, so they had to be fed commercial feed and were much too expensive.

If I had to pick just one, I'd take pigs because we all love pork, they can be fed many things I can get for free, and I like them as individuals, too. Chickens are equally cheap to feed and easy to contain, but I just don't really care for them - they stink and eat the veggie garden!

If you have pasture, sheep are great. Mine don't push the fencing, they browse and eat the blackberries and other weeds, and they're friendly and easy to deal with. However, they have to have their feet "done" regularly, and the wool breeds need to be sheared. Also, they take a full year to mature to butcher size, unlike a pig that only takes 6 months. And a pig will have a dozen babies ready to butcher in 6 months, while a sheep will have 2 butcher lambs ready in a year. Volume of meat is substantially different.

This is our first year with calves, and we'll butcher at about 7 months. We don't have the pasture to keep them fed over the winter, and we don't need as much finished meat as a full-size cow, anyway.
Kit

They do not require a pond. In fact, they're perfectly happy with a five gallon bucket to dunk their heads in. Kiddy pools also work though.

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“I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.” - E.B. White

Favorite meat? Cow no doubt..

What would I raise to feed myself?

Chicken, Quail, Rabbit, Goat.. something smaller and easier to deal with.

Most marketable I might go for Hogs.. Though lambs and goats are getting pretty popular here what with the masses of Mexican immigration we've seen.

1) Beef, 2) venison, 3) chicken.

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I thionk I would stick with the clean animals, God had a reason.

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We will meet in the golden city, called the New Jerusalem,
All our pain and all our tears will be no more.....

Yup trichinosis and a host of other parasites and such, but unlike biblical times when we didn't know about microscopic diseases and parasites we now know proper sanitation and cooking eliminates the risk where pre modern people had no clue why people got sick.

Similar to why many ancient people stored water overnight in Copper or Silver vessels, because of the metals antibacterial properties as all water was dangerous to drink back then. they didn't know why, they just realized that people who did this didn't get sick when other people did.

Today we know why this has an effect, and carbon and ceramic filters for non chlorinated water are often silver impregnated to keep the carbon from becoming fouled by bacteria as the silver is a strong anti biotic.

Anyways, to narrow the OP's question, for those who sell livestock, what animals have folks here found are the most profitable to raise and sell on a small acreage?

Well, my first though was goats. They give milk, you can eat them, the babies are SO easy to raise, a kid can control them and there is the hide. But goats have perpetual parasite issues.

Then I thought rabbit. Lots of babies, super quiet, cage bound, easy to skin, kids can handle, but, hard to feed sustainably.

Cows are great, lots of meat, they eat grass, you can milk them, then the hide, but they are BIG.

So I would have to go with a pig as my top choice. LOTS of babies, they eat anything and everything and can be kept in a small enclosure.

Second choice, a miniature cow, for the reasons above (although I Love my big ones)

But I would miss eggs if I had to choose.

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We've had cattle and pigs in the past, never sheep or goats, so can't do comparisons there. Family used to have chickens for both meat and eggs ... I don't use many eggs and I hate butchering birds, so haven't raised chickens personally. Rabbits work well for us although if I were still able to hunt, venison would definitely be my first choice.

If I could only keep one kind of livestock, it would be goats. Goat meat is good, and they give milk -- their primary product for us is the milk, with meat being a by-product when there's a goat to cull. But if I had more room, I could keep more goats and we'd have more meat from them. They are hard to fence but easy to feed. I like the fact that, as smaller animals, they are easier to butcher at home than a steer or cull cow (I've butchered moose before, which are comparable in size -- that's a LOT of work).

I'm not especially fond of rabbit meat, and have not found them to be good reliable producers, but they ARE easy to feed with whatever grows around your area. It's a little more work, but can be done if necessary.

A few chickens are cheap and easy, but when you start raising enough to supply meat for a family, you need to either raise grains and legumes for feed, or buy commercial feed.

Ditto for turkeys, although turkey is one of my favorite meats.

I like duck and goose meat, but it takes forever to pluck either kind of fowl -- a big goose is an all-day job to pluck! I do want to try Muscovies, though, as I've heard they aren't as hard to pluck.

I like sheep, but am not fond of the taste of lamb/mutton, at least not from the breeds I've eaten. I'd be willing to give it a try again, but doubt that I'd go into raising sheep in any big way.

Pork. Well, I don't like pigs to start with, and they ARE one of the unclean animals in the Bible (as are rabbits). They aren't that hard to raise, and I like the taste of pork on my plate, but I can't make a steady diet of it or I start not feeling good. Did that one winter after we'd raised and butchered two big pigs. About all the meat we had for several months was pork, and I noticed after a short time that I wasn't feeling well. When we were able to get some beef again and stop eating the pork all the time, I was fine. So for me, pork is a once-in-a-while treat.

Venison is good, but with my handicapped DD, it's pretty difficult for me to go hunting. I haven't done any hunting here, in spite of the fact that we have deer in the yard nearly every night, because the neighboring houses are too close to be shooting in any direction. Maybe, when we get moved to our own place (IF this place sells), I'll be able to hunt, as the property I hope to get is pretty isolated from other dwellings, with woods all around for close to a mile in any direction.

Kathleen

Clarification: They're one of the unclean animals in the Old Testament.

Jesus, on the other hand, said, What goes into a man's mouth does not make him 'unclean,' but what comes out of his mouth, that is what makes him 'unclean.' " (Matt.15:11)

In Mark, it's even more significant:
18 "Are you so dull?" he asked. "Don't you see that nothing that enters a man from the outside can make him 'unclean'? 19 For it doesn't go into his heart but into his stomach, and then out of his body." (In saying this, Jesus declared all foods "clean.")
The parenthetical addition, while not actually Christ's words, were added by Mark in his writing of the book.

Further, there's 1Timothy:
3 They forbid people to marry and order them to abstain from certain foods, which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and who know the truth. 4 For everything God created is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, 1Timothy 4:3-4

Now, there ARE those who think these verses don't have anything to do with the earlier Jewish food laws. However, most Christians think this was part of the whole Jesus-came-to-fulfill-the-Law thing and consequently the old Jewish food restrictions no longer apply.

Carry on.

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~*~Erin~*~
SAHM, ranch wife, sub and quilt shop proprietress
the Back Gate Country Quilt Shop

Goat is a favorite here followed by chicken.

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Judy
Oat Bucket Farm
Central Kansas


The past is valuable as a guidepost, but not so if used as a hitching post.