As far as I can tell, they aren't selling. Darn difficult to even give them away.

I eat mine, and with the price of feed, they are not a cheap dinner. I like rabbit, though, so I raise them.

Ever look around and wonder why all the infrastructure in pastured livestock is cattle and not goats, even though goat is the most widely eaten meat in the world and the US does not produce enough to satisfy its own demand?

That's because cows make more money with less work and inputs, and that's why the whole pasture livestock world from farm to sale barn to slaughterhouse is built around them. And this is coming from a guy who has spent 22 years raising beef cattle and 21 years raising goats for the mass meat market. I sold the goat herd and goat equipment last year. I just could not justify all the inputs and the huge labor demands it took anymore. What a change in my lifestyle that made! Wow, I have free time now!

I love and miss goats, but they do not make money as a farmed meat animal when all costs are factored in. That is why so many goat operations are show kid or pet or breeding genetics-oriented. It is also why the typical goat herd is owned for just 3 years on average. To simply farm them like you do cows doesn't pay. I hate to say it, but I have 21 years of experience to prove it.

We love goat meat. Our herd fed us for years. But it comes down to being easier and more profitable to raise cows and buy goats to slaughter and put in the freezer.

If you want profits, buy heifers and a young bull as cheap as you can at auction and start there. These are known by some as "mortgage lifters." Raise them up on grass, breed them and use some of the profits from selling the 6-month-old calves to buy better breeding stock as you go. This is a route many a farmer has taken, and in a decade, you will have fine animals and a good operation.

A 600-pound calf here is almost $800 at the sale barn. It'd take 6 or more goat kids 6-8 months old to equal 1 calf (goat is about $1.50/lb now). So if you sell 10 calves, you'd need at least 60 kids to get the same gross payback. You'll have more inputs in the goats, and more labor cost, if my 21 years of experience counts for anything.

It is very difficult to start or run a small farm (under 500 acres) and come out simply on profit vs. loss with farming as the sole occupation.

Livestock wise, as an example, it takes 80 calves at current prices to buy a new pickup. Not that you need a new pickup; I am using that as a reference point. That figure has just now gotten back to where it was in the go-go 80s relative to inflation. To return $25,000 in net profit for the farmhouse to live on, a body has to run 425 head of mama cows and have a 90% weaned calf crop for sale each year. That's hard work.

Subsistence farming is another matter entirely, and it is possible with the right stock and large gardens to provide most of the food consumed on the home place by just using grass as the basis for meat and fertilizer needs. But that's not what we are discussing here, I don't think.

For someone looking to start a farm to earn cash, small is not the way to go. The best way to go in that case is to crop farm by owning small acres and leasing the majority of the rest.

Of course, small farms can "farm the government" by claiming tax deductions and sheltering other cash income that way, as long as the auditor doesn't come calling someday. But beware the salespeople who tell you that you can make money on a small farm. Many a person has lost their life's savings that way. I've run my place on old equipment and used stuff for years, and I get it from the forced sales from the newbies who came with stars in their eyes and a Joel Salatin book in their hands.

About the prophets, ask yourself: If he's doing so well farming, why does he have to sell books and go on paid speaking tours and have people pay him to do "internship" chores on his farm? (I sure would like folks to pay me to do my farm chores!)

I'm sorry if this sounds harsh, but there are facts to consider in any hardnosed business decision, and farming is a low return on investment business, so you must be careful how you do it if you seek monetary profits and not just a hobby.

At the little auction here we get between $8.00 and $15.00 for each rabbit. I think it is pretty good. Ours are NZW and we have even gotten up to $20.00 a few times.

Sorry to disagree, but $6000 would be the value of the hay... not the cost.

The cost of a product is the amount spent to produce it. The value is what it's worth to whomever is using it.

I magine rabbit worth, like most other animals is different in different parts of the country. Im carrying around 75 to 100 right now, and CL dosnt do hardly a thing for me selling them. If I take them out to a huge sale first Sat of ea month, I have to pay 25% comm. Hardly nobody takes rabbits there, but therll be maybe 5 to 700 chickens.

I certainly see a lot of people doing it.

Of course I also see many who hold a job in-town.



I sell produce in a Farmer's Market where I rub elbows with a number of other small food producers.

What I have been seeing is that 4 to 8 acres is about optimum for the beginner. It is about the best size to get going and step away from needing a job in town. While having enough profit potential to support either a family, or else a partnership of 3 to 4 adults.



There are scams in any business.

I am not familiar with Joel Salatin.



Are you talking about your Joel Salatin ?

I have no desire to google to see who your buddy is. From your description it sounds like he is running a scam.



I think that most of your 'harshness' is focused on your Joel Salatin.

From where I stand, small farms are popping up all around.

WC - been a month almost 2 since I've been to the auction. I think around here at least, they sell better there in the spring. I would say an "average" price is around $5. It's not uncommon to see them bring closer to $10. I have seen some go for more, even up to $25 but that doesn't happen often. Usually the larger and more colored they are, the more they will bring.

I know some people have issues with auction animals. I've never had a problem especially with rabbits. The only rabbit we lost soon after an auction was one that a guy gave me. I made the comment about how I didn't want to spend that much on one but I thought about getting the kids one. He said he had 2 that was hurt and gave me. It had happened on the way to the auction so he didn't sell them. I think the mother had died and they were almost too young to wean. One had his nose bit almost off by another buck. The other wasn't too strong looking. I didn't have any other rabbits here and they were free so I took them. The weak one died on the way home, the other with the messed up nose lived for several months before I sold him.

Unfortunately, for the most part Jim S is correct, and my thoughts have mirrored his for many years.

I am not sure Joel Salatin is necessarily a scam, nor have I read any of his books, but I did read a book on a cattle farmer that was raising grass fed only beef and I quickly realized, while his method may work incredibly well for him, it would never work here in Maine. Yeah I have known people to winter graze in Maine...it was called a divorce and the person had no money to buy hay so he called it winter grazing while the rest of us called it starving his livestock!

I do differ in Jim S in that I do not think you can give a certain amount of acreage as the cut off point of a farm being sustainable or not. There is just too many variables between farms in soil quality, rain fall, micro climates and topography to say this amount of acreage works and this doesn't. But I do agree that leasing land makes far more sense then paying property taxes. On our big dairy farm WE HAVE TO LEASE, there is no way, with Maine's high property taxes, that we could own our own land entirely and successfully farm. No way.

But that farm is all supported by family members that work off the farm. The reason is simple, every household that draws an income off the farm also needs to have health insurance, and it is just too costly to do so off the farm's income. Instead wives (or husband's) draw an income off-farm and put their spouses and kids on that employers health insurance.

I understand the Middleman takes a big cut of the profit, but few farmers starting out realize that to get the Middleman's pay, they must do the Middleman's job. Myself, I have no motivation to babysit a parking lot all day just so I can sell my crops and call myself a farmer. I would rather spend my day on the farm doing what I do best, raising crops, and taking care of sheep and cows. For those that do, they pay a price for that.

As for farmers market type farms; here in Maine anyway, the standard figure is about $5000 per acre. The math is pretty easy, if you are targeting an income of $25,000 you should plan on putting in a 5 acre garden and so on. Here though, the Farmer Markets are everywhere and really saturated the market. It is hard to get into the more lucrative Farmer Markets since they are not letting in any more members. The days of having a few acres and making a living off it are just about over...at least here I think...but perhaps niche marketing will change that?

When we lived in Arkansas and had our little herd of dairy goats we were turning a decent profit with them. We could sell 100 gallons of milk a month on premise and we always had buyers for that 100 gallons at $6 a gallon. So that worked out to $600 a month. On top of that I was constantly making cheese for our use and some that I traded to others for veggies and berries. Also had a woman that would trade me milk for soap that she used the milk to produce. Plus we were able to sell any unwanted kids for a decent profit.

I'm not claiming the $600 was all profit as I don't have the books here in front of me to show where we were on feed costs and such, but we turned a profit each month they were in milk. There was a lot of time invested in them, and it all really started out as an experiment to see how we would like it. It took a while to find enough people to meet our 100 gallon a month limit in sales, and there was definitely a learning curve in it all. Luckily the pigs and chickens ate all the extra milk and bad experimental cheeses.

I am not suggesting that you try this route. You seriously need to look at how you want your livestock to produce money for you and how much of a time investment you are able to commit to the endeavor everyday. I would have never committed to dairy animals if I wasn't a stay at home dad at that time. Visit others in your area and try to see what works for them and try to identify any gaps that you think you might be able to fill with your livestock choice. You might be surprised at what you come up with.

PrettyPaisley-

There are plenty of books and articles out there for building most of the components for beekeeping. The best suggestion I can offer on it would be to contact your local extension office and see if they can hook you up with a local group.

Never buy used hives or hive components unless they come with the bees in them already. That is the first piece of advice offered to me by a keeper when I was loking into bees.

'Winter graze in Maine'?

LOL

The DOT had to shut-down I-95 for a week 2 years ago, after they had cut down bush in the median, because hundreds of deer had swarmed the area looking for winter graze. [I remember because my road was used for the detour]



I have my pension, so I know which side of the divide I stand on.

Though I do see some families who appear to be surviving without jobs. But health insurance is a big killer to those dreams.

How anyone can afford $1,400/month for insurance is beyond me.



:)

I tried that too, a terrible way to blow a day. I shifted to Buyer's Clubs. A group of 30 families makes a group order, so you make one delivery/week and leave.

Much better than parking lot sitting.



Sounds about right.



Surprised to see so many new FMs that started up this spring though.



Could be.

We are a small farm and we get no subsidies. We earn our entire living from our farm. We have no off farm jobs. The farm pays the mortgage and all. We're for profit, not hobby. It can be done and is done by many families.

We have no interns, paid or unpaid. Our family does all the work. It is far more efficient that way as we've been doing it together for a long time so we understand what we're doing, our short hand talk, how to work with our animals, our working dogs, etc.

As to the cost of pasture, it is essentially zero. I don't like having neighbors close by. So I have a buffer zone between me and them. On this buffer zone I do forestry, grow plants and raise livestock. I can't hay that land so there is no opportunity cost of selling hay off those pastures - our land is way too steep and rocky to be rolling equipment down.

We do buy winter hay. Our ~300 pigs eat eat many tons of hay each winter plus some for bedding. I considered improving some of my flatter areas for hay but they're filled with trees and rocks. It would take a lot of work to convert them and then a lot to hay them. It is cheaper for me to buy hay and graze our land. Buying winter hay also brings in nutrients which improves our farm's soils. It also keeps another small part time farm and a half employed supplying us so that's good for the local economy.

For us, raising pigs on pasture works. For other people other animals or crops will work. If you have fertile flat lands then grains may be great. Lots of options. Lots of variations in resources. We also raise other animals and grow things like pumpkins as part of raising the pigs. It is a system where the output is the pigs. It is the pigs which we sell to earn cash. All the other animals and veggies are to help get the pigs to market.

We sell mostly wholesale to local stores and restaurants. We're well off the beaten path so it doesn't make sense for lots of people to come here and we don't like doing farmer's markets. My wife drives a ~400 mile delivery route each week to get our meat in stores and restaurants. In the time it would take to sit in a single farmer's market she can deliver to dozens of outlets. We value that the store keepers have a place for the customers to come with display space so we just have to deliver once a week. This works efficiently for us. Other people have other personalities and might want to make different choices.

Our biggest cost is the meat processing so we're building our own facility to handle that here on-farm. Vertical integration and Just-in-Time farming.

Cheers,

-Walter
Sugar Mountain Farm
in the mountains of Vermont

Once you convert the hay to feed it becomes a cost. Creative accounting is a fools game. You need to compare the value of the hay with the gain in beef.

If you had a million dollars worth of "free" hay and produced $100,000 worth of beef would you consider it profit?

so, Walter, forgive the daft question, but the just in time part is that once you have the facility, you can process the meat when people need it and not have to have a lot on hand in the freezer hoping to sell it? Sorry, but I am learning a lot of new stuff... just want to make sure I am getting it. =0) I get the vertical integration part. Processing involves you in another layer of the distribution line of the pork. The just in time part... ?? That's pretty smart, man. That gives me some food for thought.

Did I get it right?

Cindyc.

What kind of hay do you feed your hogs? Is that in a slop or dry? And you feed NO grain?

I know of a co-worker that raises Goats on a "Goat Farm" IMO It's a tricky buisness and typically Goat meat sells high around the Jewish holidays, if they have a good spring they are able to get the Goats sold on Market BEFORE passover. Just not much demand for Goat meat.

There for a While Bison was a big deal, "bison steak, bison burgers, etc." was like a niche market, I don't think the prices are there anymore.

With 300 pigs, you are closer to a medium sized operation than a small one. My FIL lived solely off his grassfed dairy farm for his entire life, raising his family there. He was the very first in Connecticut to throw away his plow and go all grass; the first in the state to use a pit silo and hay conditioner, too. A great upbringing for the kids, but everyone wore hand-me-downs that were patched on top of patches. Doing without was part of the "price paid" for living independently, and that was his main objective.

One other point: Even if you inherited your land, there is a cost to pasture, always. If nothing else, it is the money you have tied up in the land. There are many land millionaires around here who drive 25-year-old trucks, live in rundown houses and pinch their pennies. Their money is all in the land.

Your post illustrates what I am trying to say very well. You can't go out and get 5 or 10 acres and be self-sufficient. Many of the posts I see in this thread do not take into account a true cost of production including land costs, taxes, feed, labor, meds, etc. If you run that accounting on a small place, you'll see it's not as rosy as you may think. Ag is a great lifestyle but a low Return on Investment (ROI) endeavor, which is why it is so hard to keep junior on the farm.

Here we call such people as "Land Rich and Money Poor." It is not unlikely to know many people with hundreds of acres who barely squeak out a living. Property taxes and the cost of living here really do many people in.

It is pretty easy to do the math, taxes here average about $10 per acre for undeveloped land, so if a person has 1600 acres of land, that is a $16,000 dollar tax bill every year. I already said that an acre of farm market food brings on average her $5000 per acre, and there is only so much one person can do. If that limit is 5 acres, then you will make $25,000 dollars, or which $16,000 must go to property taxes. I don't know of many people who can make a living on $9000 a year, which is why spouses work off-farm.

I have a neighbor who has 3200 acres of land, and yet him and his wife drive school bus in an effort to eek out a living. They do sell 300 acres worth of hay, but even then the cost of his property taxes, is $32,000 dollars which is debilitating. That is why Jim S is oh so right, you own a few hundred acres to get by and then lease the rest.

If you take my neighbor, you can see that he has 3200 acres, of which 300 acres is in agricultural land, making the other 2900 acres forest.

Here the stocking rate is about 15 cords per acre, and a cord of wood is worth about 70 per cord since we have both hardwood and softwood trees. Rate of growth is only about 1/2 a cord per acre per year, so at most his 2900 acres would net him about $100,000 per year IF he harvested it at maximum yield and without calculating his costs of harvesting the wood. Just subtracting his property taxes my neighbor would be working extremely hard, harvesting about 40 cord per week just to make $68,000 per year.

I make more than that just working in a lolely ole shipyard, and that is without factoring what the poor guy would pay in equipment costs, diesel fuel costs and gas and oil for his chainsaws. It is why I laugh when people claim they save x amount of dollars on burning firewood, actually, if you truly figure your costs, firewood is the most expensive way to heat your home possible.

I once did the math on my own place and figured I make about $25 per acre on woodlot. With a real life assessment for my wood lot value, it was very easy to see that the more land I convert from forest into agriculture, the better.

Niche Animals
 

Cabin Fever is right. Animals or plants raised for niche markets are by far the most profitable.
Leeches at $12.00 a pound is peanuts. Medical leeches sell for as much as 100times that.
There are dozens of different animals and plants that are being raised for staggering amounts by people with training and skills who have developed the culture techniques and the markets and then keep a low profile. Farmers are the biggest copy cats in the world.

Too many people try to find a niche animal and end up with a lot of useless yard ornaments.

"It can't be done"
 

Those who have a successful business supplying a specialized niche market love to hear the experts say "it can't be done" or "it takes too much work" or best of all "anyone who claims that they raise (insert species here) on their farm is a fraud" The successful niche supplier will never disagree with the experts and will never divulge details about their operation to anybody except the IRS. The only thing that really matters is that the checks from the customers are good.

Yep. A farmer with business savvy can certainly raise a niche "crop" and market it to a profit, and he or she sure isn't going to pass out a copy of he business plan to everyone.
Heck, some farms specialize in luffa gourds to sell bath sponges. Some people still sell all the buffalo or yak they can raise.
I agree that certain animals are pyramid schemes that eat-- but if you've got a passion, do the research, and have *A* market as an outlet, just about anything can be raised at a profit.

I've seen pasture eggs as a profit (despite 99% of chicken keepers unable to beat the cost to feed with local prices). I've seen grass beef and pasture pork profitable operations too. I've seen fiber farms rake it in too.
The laziest farmer I've ever seen though, was an "organic hay" farmer. He basically turned a water system on a field of bermuda brambles, harvested, and sold for 15$ a bale in the 90s. The hay was garbage full of weeds and thistles btw.

Yes, exactly. We slaughter weekly and deliver to stores, restaurants and individuals right away. That way we have very little in the freezer. We deliver fresh. Inventory in the freezer isn't earning money. It costs less to store inventory out in the fields on the hoof and harvest as needed.

We already have this Just-in-Time farming established and have been doing that for years. But right now my wife gets up at 2 am every week and drives down to Mass to deliver the livestock to the slaughterhouse and pickup the meat from last week's batch. Having our own slaughterhouse, butcher shop and smokehouse will eliminate this long drive as well as saving the cost which is about 36% to 50% of what we make on each pig (depending on smoking, sausage making, etc).


We feed primarily pasture (warm months) and then replace that in the winter with second cut hay that is wrapped round bales lightly fermented. The pigs eat about 400 lbs of hay each per winter. It varies by size, of course. Each sow also uses about 800 lbs over the course of a farrowing between her nest and eating. We also get some lower grade hay for bedding. They eat some of that but prefer the second cut wrapped hay as it is better quality.

We also feed about 1800 gallons of whey a day. That is mostly water but it has a little bit of lysine, an amino-acid they need for good growth. It also provides some calories and co-digests well with the pasture/hay. Dairy complements the pasture well.

We've sometimes raised them totally on pasture but the added dairy brings the growth rate to six months. On solely pasture it is about seven to eight months. We also grow pumpkins and such that are easy for us to produce and make for good fall forage when the pastures wane. See Pigs | Sugar Mountain Farm

We buy no grain. We feed a small amount of bread from a local bakery which we use as a training tool to teach them to walk and load. Since they get so little it is highly appetitive. We get a small amount of boiled barley from a local brew pub. Again, see the link above.


No, and size not an opinion issue either. There is a legal definition of 749 pigs over 50 lbs or 3,000 under 50 lbs being the upper limit for a small farm. We are far below that limit thus we are definitely a small farm.

You make too many assumptions about things you don't know. I didn't inherit it. I bought and paid for it myself. Not to have pasture but to have a buffer between me and neighbors, as I explained. The land is there. Being able to do something with it has no additional cost to the land. If I just wanted pasture I would have bought a lot less. I do make use of what I bought, raising plants, animals and doing forestry, as mentioned. That is logical.

That is the illogic of a banker type thinking and not logical. Where would you put the money? In the stock market and have it dwindle away? In a 401K and have it lose value? In the bank and have inflation eat it up? None of those are wise choices. Study history.

Putting it in land has definitely been the best move. My land value has gone way up from what I paid. If I had to raise money I could sell some, or more likely I would log a section which is a faster way to raise money that lets me keep the land. I farm trees. If you want to talk investments then land is the best. Of course, not just any land and I'm not talking houses which in some places crashed. Be wise.

Yes, precisely. That's me. I would rather be rich in land. I can live on the land. I can grow food on the land. I can cut trees for fuel. I can raise more than I need and sell the extra to pay taxes or buy things. I can't live on stocks and bonds - They're useless paper. I would have to have a lot more extra money to want to squander it on imaginary assets. I'll stick with _real_ estate.

Well, you're wrong, but you have the right to be wrong. I can do it. I am doing it. You sit there saying it can't be done but I do it. I know that I can use just four acres to produce everything we need. I've done that. I expanded what we were using to about 10 acres and was able to earn enough to pay all our costs. Then once I had the techniques down pat I grew our farm larger. We produce all we need. Don't confuse need with want. That's a classic mistake.

That mentality is your problem. Classic Wall Street thinking.

Actually, our kids love it here and want to stay here farming. They love the lifestyle. They know it inside and out, from raising animals to the business side to the chemistry of metals and more. They're involved and a part of it.

Chicken Farmers have gotten by on only a few acres of land for years here in Maine, we raised 75000 birds in a five story chicken house that encompassed about 1/2 of an acre. But what you can fit on an acre, and what you can morally and ethically raise within a given acreage is two different things.

You said you raised 300 pigs but never gave an acreage amount so it is impossible to do the math, but you can still follow my thinking on this.

Animals tend to poo out 85% of what they eat, and the land can only absorb so much of that. How much is dependent upon soil type, topography, minerals in the soil, etc. Only soil testing and manure testing can make that determination called a Comprehensive Nutrient Management Plan. They are expensive, but necessary.

As a rule, you can easily determine if you might be contaminating your soil with manure if you have to constantly import feed for your animals. This is especially true of grazing animals and rather hard to figure out in your case because you bring so much feed to your pigs. What a lot of small farmers and homesteaders do not realize is, they may be feedlots without even knowing it.

My neighbor for instance has one acre of land, with her home taking about 1/4 of it. On the 3/4 of an acre she pastures, she has 30 sheep and a donkey. That many sheep cannot sustainably graze the small amount of grass 3/4 of an acre grows, so she imports hay even in the summer. That means those sheep and donkey continue to poo. The soil cannot absorb that much tonnage of poo so she is essentially a feedlot that is contaminating her soil. It is especially disturbing because she is just uphill from a stream, and with 5, 11 and 4 inches of rain in the last three storms, all within two weeks...guess where that excess manure is going...into the stream.

In contrast, our 1200 cow dairy farm produces a lot of manure, but we have storage facilities and plenty of land to spread it out on. The same went for our chicken farm when it was in operation..plenty of land to disperse the manure, and even then it was monitored with soil testing. Few small farms and homesteaders have these storage facilities so just piling up the manure contaminates the ground.

I am not saying that you Highlands, are necessarily are polluting your own soil, as I said, I cannot do the math because I don't have all the data, nor should I. That is your moral and ethical obligation, but people, especially small farmers and homesteaders need to think of this issue before they start loading up their small acreages with a lot of animals especially if they do not have a impermeable surface in which to store manure, or have a place to spread it.

It is interesting to note that everything I am saying is biblical. In the Old Testament God commands the Israelite's to farm their ground for 6 years and to let the soil remain fallow in the 7th year. You can figure out why if you simply do the math. In those days, grazing animals was their mainstay for food and as such, those animals ate and pooed out 85% of what they consumed. That means the animals retained 15% of what the land produced. After 6 years the land had become nearly depleted of nutrients (15% times six equates to 90% depletion). So God commanded they let the soil rest. It would grow a crop in the 7th year, die on its own and compost back into the soil rejuvenating it.

Today even Christian Farmers such as myself are not bound by the Old Testament commandment because we use technology...in the form of manure spreaders and such...to replenish the lost nutrients through fertilizers and manure, something the Isrealite's could not do. But we do have an obligation to ensure we are not abusing the land that God has entrusted us with. That is a very high moral and ethical obligation that I take seriously and suggest others do as well.

On my homestead my big gentle brwn swiss milk cow providing all the milk cream and dariy products I can make her calf 1/2 angus goes to the butcher at 7-800#s at 10 months old for a years supply of great beef my dogs pig and I are shiny with health .I help run a tractor at hay time a few days in summer and set out big bales of it during the winter feeding her and a few head of stock cattle.
If you have pasture and hay cattle are the best income maker now that the prices for beef on the hoof are high .2 years ago when the prices were 1/3 of what they are now you had to be a sharp cattle man to come out on top angus always sell for more here .your feed cost where you live will determin your profit if you could get corn cheeper than I can hogs can make money raiseing only 1-2 at a time with leftovers from a friends fruit market skim milk and little bought feed they grow slower but provide good pork for us

Our livestock are rotationally grazed on 70 acres as I've mentioned before. We have a lot more acreage than that, we also do forestry as I've mentioned, and the forestry and fields are intimately linked together. It's a system.

The animals improve the soil. We used to have thin, nutrient pour soils. We now have sweeter, more neutral (better pH), highly acidic (thanks to Mid-West sourced acid rain) soil. Now after years of grazing it has improve fertility that supports a much greater variety of plant and animal life. It's been great watching the fields blossom over the years.

No, most of their feed comes from our pastures. They consume from our pastures about eight months of the year plus they get beets, turnips, pumpkins, sunflowers and other foods grown on our pastures for additional months of the year. The primary outside source of feed is winter hay which is about 400 pounds per pig on average, as mentioned before.

No, are not feedlots and I am keenly aware of the difference. I have a cousin who has a factory farm. I've seen feedlots.

We are doing managed rotational grazing on pastures that are full of forage plants. It's about as far from feedlot as you can get. Go see my blog. Lush plant growth out in the fields for the animals. That's how we keep our feed bill down. We grow the food for our animals so we don't have to buy feed other than winter hay. I could grow winter hay but it is cheap enough at this point and our soils are rocky and steep enough that is is easier to buy winter hay than to get fields hay ready, buy the equipment, etc. That doesn't change the fields as grazing and that most of what we feed comes from our own fields, gathered by the animals - I don't bring them breakfast in bed.

Not comparable. That's city compared to us. We have a lot more land and our house is a lot smaller at 252 sq-ft which is 0.0063 acres, not 0.25 acres like you cite. We have no lawn. To stick to comparable situations.

She may be imbalanced but that has nothing to do with us, or most people. In our case we have plenty of land per animal so they are working to improve the quality of the land, not overload it. We then use that fertility to grow more food. Based on your comment below, I suspect we have more land per animal unit than you do.

Really, please, do go read the thousands of articles I've written about it. They're free and will clear up your miss-understandings rather than my repeating everything here. I farm during the day, I write in the evening to relax. I charge nothing for it. I just share. It's free. Enjoy. (No, I don't do seminars, workshops, farm tours or other gatherings either. Not my way.)

Since you're asking these sorts of questions: How many acres do you spread it on?

We have a rather different way. Rather than us spreading the manure what we do is have our livestock spread it. This eliminates the use of a tractor, my time, fuel, etc. I find it more efficient. But then I don't keep my animals indoors. If you're keeping your 1,200 dairy cows inside then, understandably, you have a need to mechanize the spreading. Different style.

By the way, 1 dairy cow = 4 finisher pigs in standard animal units so your 1,200 dairy cows = 4,800 finisher pigs. That would be more like 10,000 grower pigs. This is a standard animal unit math used by the government for comparisons. That might help you with your math figuring. So what that means is you need 33 times more land than I need given the difference in herd sizes. I use 70 acres for the farming. To be comparable you would have 2,333 acres for your 1,200 dairy cows. That is a feasible number. Do you have it?

Except, I have a lot more acreage that the 70 acres drains to. This is our forest lands. Our farm is able to fertilize our forests which improves tree growth. We have more than an order of magnitude more forest land than fields. This would mean you would need to have more like 23,000 acres to have a comparable amount of land for your 1,200 cows. Do you have it?

Except, we grow most of our feed. Do you buy feed or grow it? Growing the feed takes the nutrients and cycles them back through the system, along with the nutrients the plants are capturing from the air.

I prefer not to store the manure. Rather the animals spread it immediately. This is a much simpler way.

You are repeatedly implying it. But, don't worry, I'm not. The soil fertility is improving, not polluting. There is a vast difference. This is the advantage of managed rotational grazing out on real pastures rather than confinement housing.

No, since I don't store manure I don't need a place to store it nor do I need a place to spread it. The animals natural spread the manure as they walk around grazing out on the pastures. It is becoming evident from this discussion that we farm in very different ways. I use managed rotational grazing of livestock out on pastures where they gather their own food and spread their own manure. I don't harvest the food and bring it to the animals nor do I shovel and truck manure.

Most small farms aren't storing manure. I don't think I know of any small farms who store manure. Rather they graze the animals. It is the medium sized and large farms that end up housing the animals who get into storing the manure because they have to shovel it, or otherwise move it, when they clean out the housing. I don't shovel sh**t. Saves time.

This is one thing we come close on. We use off years in our managed rotational grazing. Fields get years when they rest and other years when they're grazed. I do this for a number of reasons which include letting the grasses and other forages have a chance to go to seed so they self propagate. This way I don't have to buy as much seed, an input cost, and the plants I have are better adapted to our climate.

Another reason is that off years breaks parasite cycles naturally so we don't have to use chemical dewormers which helps preserve the dung beetle and earthworm populations. Our harsh winters also help with this.

Off years are also an opportunity to grow other things in pastures, intercropping with the pasture forages.

All both good things.

Which is how we do it. Most of our livestock's food comes from our pastures and they harvest it. Saves me time, money and equipment.

I love hearing this quote. It's simply simplistically wrong. Reality is far more complex. That quote fails to take into account that the plants suck a huge amount of nutrients right out of the air. Free fertilizer. CO2 and nitrogen to start with. Water as well. This is another way that we're building our soil interacts with the animals. We planted legumes, among other things, in our pastures. As the soil pH rose and the soil fertility improved these and the other forages are depositing more organic matter. The animals are a part of that cycle of improving the top soil quality and depth. It's a system.

This is where the fallacy comes in, from not understanding how the cycles really work. The science of the soil and animal/plant biology is a lot more complex than the simplistic 85%/15% cycle suggests.

In the end, we agree in the general principles, of stewardship of the land, the plants and the animals. Good wishes.

I see. I was wandering the same. I cannot give mine away either. I do like using their poo in the garden though.

I'm a thinkin' Plowpoint failed at his 75000 chicken operation and thinks that if he couldn't do it, no one can.

Our taxes in Kansas have a legal ceiling set by the legislature for ag land. So, our farm property taxes are very cheap, nothing like the $10 per acre someone described in Maine. Even here where the house is, this 160 acres is less than $500 per year. The other farms that have no house are a little less.

Since we pasture year round and produce our own hay, our beef cattle are very profitable and provide us with a comfortable lifestyle. We aren't tied to home. We have a 5th wheel RV and travel. We are able to do anything we want and we have everything we need. BUT... in the early years it was all about providing mostly for just our needs and not our wants or luxuries. That set us up for a profitable cow/calf operation. YES, IT CAN BE DONE. We've always had meat goats and a few dairy goats. We are increasing our goat herd. They have also been very profitable.

I like what Highlands has done. Not only have they shown it can work, but they've also shown that other livestock can be profitable, IF YOU KNOW WHAT YOU'RE DOING.

The homesteaders that fail or give up or can't make a profit are those that try to do to much on too little land, or don't understand the full picture.

By the way, when a previous poster mentioned cattle being 1/3 of what they are now, just a couple years ago, either didn't have regular beef cattle, or were trying to sell to a niche market. For the last 12 to 15 years, cattle prices have remained steady at over $100/cwt for calves, and anything over that price, anyone can make a profit. If not, they should evaluate their management practices. No time in the last 20 years have cattle been priced at 1/3 of what they are now. With prices being as high as they have been for so long, it doesn't take a genius or even a sharp cattleman to make money, if selling calves.

Hardly, we farmed chickens for 27 consecutive years and only got out when my Grandfather retired from farming. Before that we were into potatoes, something we did from the 1850's until 1988 so we were quite successful at that as well, again due to retirement of my Grandfather. The sheep farm is something I re-started in 2008, but that is entirely mine where as the dairy farm is part of the maternal side of the family tree. That one has only been farming since 1910, so I joke with them and call them newcomers to the business of farming; 392 years versus only 102 years...LOL.

For some reason Highland's felt as if I was directly addressing him, but that is not the case. In fact I specifically stated that it was not intended for him per se, but he somehow missed that and took it as an affront anyway.

We raised pigs for years, boiling the left over potatoes that failed to sell and fattened pigs on that by my Great-Grandfather so we are well versed in doing what we can to make a profit with what we got. Producing our own feed is not only more profitable, it is about the only way to farm profitably here. Keeping an eye not only on production costs, but how it is harvested and processed allows us to keep our grain bill down, something that Holsteins need a lot of. The better silage we put up, the better corn we produce, the less we need to buy, and here in Maine grain is produced from grain in the mid-west and prices reflect that transportation cost. Since all this relates to my sheep farm as well (same machinery produces feed for both), I am keenly aware of what we have, what we do and how and why we do it.

We actually have a lot in common Highland's, as while I hate to admit it, and as much as I am trying to wean myself from the forestry aspect of farming, I make considerable profit off that side of things. Sheep are far more economical per acre, but trees are money in the bank if you always cut your junk wood for pulp and keep your saw logs. Even foresters are amazed at the quality of the wood we have here...it just comes from chainsaw restraint. Like you, part of that growth is because our forest is fed by manure simply because my fields are on top of the hills and the forest land lays below it.

In New England, the best pastures in the world I am told because of topography, soil, rainfall and other factors, we can get 10 sheep per acre, and about 1 cow per acre with continuous grazing. I rotationally graze, as does the dairy farm, but they only do calfs, heifers and dry cows obviously as the milkers need more diligent care. I also free range my sheep...that is they do not even have fences to contain them. The way my farm is situated, a small portion is along the road while the remainder is just open farm land bordered by thousands of acres of uninterrupted forest. I put fence along the road to limit my liability exposure because Maine is not a free range state and we are required to keep animals out of the road, but that is it. With fields teeming with orchard grass, timothy, clover, alfalfa and covers, why would the sheep head for the woods? They are quite content where they are at over 2 acres per head of sheep. Parasitic issues are almost a non-issue for the amount of acreage they are allowed to graze upon.

As for feed lots, well most of us in the northern hemisphere of the nation do feed lot if we really want to be honest with ourselves. The grazing window for me is about 170 days with the rest having the sheep pen up near the sheep barns. Technically they can run through the snow on the ten acres the barn encompasses, but lets be honest, livestock are lazy and once you start giving them winter feed, they hunker down in a pretty tight area on their own. I track that "confinement" in my records so I have good data on how many sheep days my sheep are grazing and how many tons they consume versus grazed feed. I hope to track that as I continue to explore ways to maximize profitability.

As for obtaining winter feed, I completely understand. As I said in a previous post I WANT to put up my own feed and rely less on the dairy farm equipment, but am unmotivated to do so right now. Because my property supplies the dairy farm so much feed, and my sheep consume so little in comparison, it is just too easy to run over to the dairy farm and ask for a truckload to fill my bunker. Because their silo is tested bi-weekly and silage is better in one big pile, then little piles, I can't beat the quality and ease at which I get feed. I also save 60% over "typical" sheep farmers because I have no winter feed bill.

We may farm differently, only because we have different opportunities. I am sure if you had unlimited, free access to the huge farming equipment I have, you would take advantage of it too. As for the results, we get the same thing. Soil test prove that the only thing this farm is lacking in nutrient wise, is lime. I am even at the upper limit of organic matter simply because dairy farm manure is loaded with it. It is also loaded with clover since cows and sheep pass the seeds through them without harming the germination. You can actually see where the truck made its manure path through the fields by looking at the 30 foot row of clover-ribbon going through the field. I just let nitrogen fixation be what it is through the clover and alfalfa and never factor it into any of my equations. All that has already been done through my Comprehensive Nutrient Management Plan. I just got to abide by what it says and so far it has proven to be good.

I guess I am just surprised that when you start mentioning some routine faults of homesteaders and small farmers, people instantly assume you are against small farmers and homesteaders. That is not the case at all. I am on the county ag board and fight for small farmers and homesteaders all the tie. We need them, and I love how they defend the bigger farmers by knowing how hard it is to raise animals and veggies. Today we need them since animal right activists and others seem to be on the rise. But I must say, where I live anyway, people like my neighbor, who have very little land and several animals is pretty common, especially with horses. It sounds like you are not like that at all Highland's and that is good, but there are a lot of others that are polluting their land and just do not see it.

Highland, you almost talk Holistic Management there ;)

By managing your land and being a good land steward, one can get more production from the same land.

We like to do a gross profit analysis on things, and I still maintain that my goats produce more $ than my boyfriends cows.
One cow = 5 or 6 goats as an animal unit. (same amount of grass to feed 1 cow feeds 5 or 6 goats)
One cow = one calf
5 goats x 1.2 = 6 kids (1.2 is low, 1.5 would be better and 2 is possible with good management)
At current market prices, my 6 kids will net more money than the calf.

I think the other thing to think of, is not which particular animal, but how can your land produce more revenue? Maybe you can raise pastured chickens with your cow. They will scratch through her manure and eat undigested grains, and browse different plants than her. I am all about multi-species grazing.
I raise pastured eggs, pastured broilers and turkeys, as well as sheep and goats.
But as a small startup-farmer, it is hard. I work part time. I rent my land. I use community pasture.
In order for me to make a living off the land, I would need a minimum of 500 sheep or goats. And I'm not a big spender.

Oh, a word on the folks haying and those buying hay:
I am from Canada and hay prices were $100/ton but now more like $40/ton after 2 wet years.
The rust, rot and depreciation of machinery means that for me, it makes more sense to buy hay than to make it. Hay brought in translates as extra nutrients too - the hay cycles through the cow/goat/sheep and lands on the ground as manure = fertilizer. The uneaten hay is mulched into building a nice soil full of microbes.
If we couldn't buy hay, the next best option for us would be to hay a pasture and have the animals bale graze where the hay is, instead of hauling the hay.

I'm not familiar with the term "Holistic Management" but it may be saying the same thing. term sense. There are may ways.

Land rental is tough. I've watched a lot of farmers getting started get stung through that. It's hard to put the work investing in infrastructure into land you don't own. This is why I spent the years doing other things so we could buy. Wear a tight belt.

One thing to keep in mind is you make mistakes learning. We tried making money with rabbits, meat birds, sheep. Rabbits just didn't sell well enough back in 1992. Chickens couldn't make it without constant feeding and pampering - not my style. I raise sheep very well but the processing eats up virtually all the money. Right now we're sheepless for a few years but now that we'll have our own processing facility I plan to expand our sheep again since I'll be able to do the processing rather than spend on it. Sheep co-graze wonderfully with the pigs. The chickens and ducks co-graze well too and produce eggs which are good protein for weaner pigs. It's a system where parts working together make the difference.

Finding what works for you in your location with your resources and inclination is the biggest trick. What works for me or the next guy might not work for you or the other guy.

In terms of winter, we break our herds up into many smaller groups for the winter and then set it up so they have to walk a long distance from bed to food. This is the opposite of what most farms do with closing the animals in. This causes them to continue to exercise, we can adjust the paths and they continue to spread the manure on the fields. The animals are up on the snow pack which protects the ground. The winter paddocks become gardens during the next growing season. By fall those crops are ready to be eaten and we start moving the animals through to harvest them by their own effort. Pasture is stored in round marshmellows - ~800 lbs each. This all avoids the feedlot syndrome.

One thing I favor is going slowly. I see all too many people who try to do everything all at once and then they burn out emotionally, financially, energy-wise. There is so much to learn. Far better to pick one major thing each season, maybe a couple of minor things. I grew up gardening and seeing my cousins farm but not actually farming. Our kids have the advantage of growing up farming - they know these things from a young age. They're a step ahead.

Advice: plant some fruit trees early, even if they're not in the right place. I made that mistake, for 20 years I put off planting apples because I want the 'just right place' for the orchard. Mistake. Had I at least planted some they would be big trees now even if they were not in the perfect spot.

Highander, I have to be honest and say I am not real pleased with what I see as an insulting approach to my answers. I thought we were having a discussion and not a personal attack here.

In reading your posts, it sounds like you have it all down pat and live an idyllic lifestyle you say your kids love and your whole family enjoys while making a fine living with no other income source. While I say more power to you, that's where I get leery of the information being supplied.

A little of my background. I started out helping on my FIL's cattle farm in the late '80s and have farmed my own place for 22 consecutive years, and I have farmed in good times and bad, through great price bubbles when a lot of people thought they would be permanently rich and through terrible price depressions when the foolhardy lost everything.

My FIL, rest his soul and glad to have learned from him, started farming with OXEN at the age of 5 on his father's dairy. There is a photo of my FIL driving a 14-oxen team wagon at age 6. His father before him farmed that same place with HORSES and OXEN. My FIL expanded his farm to nearly 3 times the size of what he inherited over time. So I was taught by deep experience.

I bought and own my place outright. I buy my equipment with cash. Of course, I can't think of any powered equipment I have that was made after 1970, but it is in good shape and gets the job done.

If you can find info that says farming is NOT a low ROI endeavor, please supply it. Every business analysis, including those of the lenders, says it is. I have sold cattle at $1.65. I have sold cattle at 33 cents. I have sold goats at $2. I have sold goats at 50 cents. I can control the timing to a degree but not the price.

Yes, yes, I could sell them to people who come to my farm. That is always the idyllic perfect solution. Did that too, for 2 years, until a "customer" came back later and stole the goats he had been looking at from my back pasture. Then I got out that sharp pencil and found I had been losing money on on-farm sales all along, when my hours of waiting on people and jawboning with tire-kickers were factored in.

My friend is the University guy for small ruminents around here. LOL, he learned more about practical small ruminent farming from watching me while I did it than he did from those textbooks, and it has been fun to see how the influence of my operation affected what he tells newbies in his seminars. He still has huge inefficiencies on his own farm, and yet that is THE way it is done by the book, so that's how he does it. He's not making money and says he'd like to get rid of the goats, but has to keep them for appearances sake since he is the small ruminent expert. LOL.

He did a full-scale multi-year study of an actual goat operation for meat goats, starting from scratch and the University raised the goats. They kept meticulous records. Conclusion? It lost a ton of money.

My FIL had great sayings.

"The eggheads will tell you they have all the answers. Beware of the man with all the answers."

Plowpoint used one, too: "The best tool a good farmer has is a sharp pencil."

"I don't care that you have 'maximized production.' What is the true and complete COST and how much did you MAKE?"

"NOTHING is FREE!"

"The seed, feed and chemical companies don't want the farmer to think about his profit, just their own."

"Never forget who FUNDS the university research."

My favorite, though, was, "Interest is a dead horse, and you can't ride a dead horse."

Anyhow, Highlands, I am glad you live the idyllic life, but your posts make me scratch my head. Even the biggest grain farmer in my county, who grows on 5,000 acres, still keeps his postal delivery job. He'll probably need it this year, as we are in severe drought here and the corn crop is already mostly lost.

I love the farming lifestyle dearly, but it does a dis-service to the new folks looking in here to sugarcoat the economic realities of agriculture. I don't want anyone to lose their shirt by not looking cold-eyed at the business. Anyone who does not know their true land, labor, feed, seed, fertilizer, inputs, equipment, overhead and opportunity costs in cold, hard figures is not being honest with themselves about their operation, regardless of its size or product. How true it was when my FIL used to say, "NOTHING is FREE!"

I've read Highlands note. There is absolutely nothing insulting there.

Somehow, highlands gets prices for his product that the rest of us can only dream about. I don't know if that is because he is the best salesman in the world, or if it is a function of where he lives, with a huge customer base of wealthy healthy purchasers. But whatever it is, he's got himself a system that makes farming pay well for him.

Good for him, I say, and more power to him. Just because in my area, the farmers all have second jobs and a lot of farmers go broke, doesn't mean that some people haven't got the system working for them just perfectly. Highlands isn't the only one i know of who has figured out how to make farming pay in the area he lives in.

I personally think it is a rare person, in a perfect environment, who has mad marketing skills who can make a lot of money while farming. For the rest of it, it costs too much money to get in, land is too expensive, equipment is too expensive, taxes are too high, weather is too uncooperative, and product sells for far too little.

Of course that doesn't mean that the family can't be fed on home raised food and a few dollars can't be made by selling some of the produce. Just that most of us can't pay all the bills and live entirely on the product of the farm.

This whole thread is bizarre. It's like it is so "all or nothing" for some people - either you try to make a ton of money or you can't make anything at all and it isn't worthwhile.

That's, honestly, kinda ridiculous. There's definitely a middleground of minimizing your expenses, living a simpler lifestyle, and finding which niche product might sell well in your community. By doing all of that, you can earn a comfortable living on your farm.

I have seen SO many people say it can't be done, but I've met a lot of people who are doing it, and loving life. Apparently those people were never told it couldn't be done. They earn a living, are not broke, put their kids through college, and aren't necessarily working themselves to the bone.

Interestingly, I've noticed that most of the people that say you can't make a comfortable living on the farm are usually those who have huge farms, which necessitates the acquisition of large machinery, infrastructure, and the resulting debt.

Everyone that I've met or talked to who is, in fact, making a comfortable life for themselves and their families via the farm have minimized expenses (Highlands, for instance, lives in a very small home debt-free) and worked their way slowly, keeping their products to higher dollar items where there is a true market.

They also haven't grown bigger than what they can reasonably handle, maybe a tractor or so. Niche markets are great, and can sometimes be worth driving into the big city for their farmer's market. How about mushrooms, asparagus, etc? Selling to restaurants you will often get a better price than regular markets, since the chefs are often willing to pay more for the better quality than a deal-seeker going to the FM for cheap veggies.

As far as my answer to the question of this thread - I seem to remember a discussion on HT where someone said her most profitable animal was feeder mice she raised and sold to pet stores.

I think one of the reasons why this is so, is because the larger farmer has more to lose. I know on our big dairy farm, currently there is 4 generations that draw an income from what the dairy cows produce, because so many people rely on them, we cannot simply change what we do on a whim. Nor should we. We have an established farm, and as such, the best thing we can do is keep progressing forward, nudging the direction here or there, and still utilizing our vast contacts, size, economy of scale, and position in the community to move forward. Every ship Captain and pilot knows, you should stay the course and make subtle changes should the weather change...not drastic ones.

Start up operations and small farms do not have this burden. They have little to lose should their "radical ideas" not materialize and have few people to be concerned about. As Janis Joplin said in her rendition of Me and Bobby McGee, "Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose"...well start up farms and small farmers have exactly that, nothing to lose. Big farms have considerable assets and people relying on them to stay successful. That is why there is such a shift in attitudes.

But old farms such as mine and the dairy farm in the family, have seen a lot of farms with new ideas fail. We get labeled sticks in the mud, and non-progressive thinkers, but the reality is, the majority of these radical farm ideas do fail over the long term. I guess it depends on what a person thinks of as "long term successful." My definition is multi-generational, where as a new farmer might consider 10 years in the farming business as "running a successful farm". Neither one of us is wrong...its just a different perspective.

For instance, I know of a woman that came from out of state and really went head-long into the sheep industry here. I thought her ways was progressive, and that she was really doing well starting some new markets and doing some new things we have not done before...many which benefited me with new places and ways to sell my sheep.

But it was too intensive...

She could not maintain the amount of work that it required, so now, less than 10 years after she began, she is throwing in the towel, selling off her sheep and business and moving back where she came from. I hope she keeps her head up; she tried hard and realized what a few of us knew all along, that doing the middle man's job, WHILE farming is incredibly intensive. But for me, her leaving is sad because now I am left without a market that I grew accustomed too. That leaves a sad taste in my mouth, and it certainly leaves a bad taste in the mouths of the restaurants and stores that based part of their sales on the lamb and mutton that she gathered throughout the state. The sad truth is, the markets she generated came and went with her; and I guess I am just glad that I was not silly enough to depend on her for my entire sales as I am sure some sheep farmers here did. And I think that is why a few of us old farmers are a bit skeptical sometimes. Experience can make you jaded...and self preserved.

Highlands, your house would be about 16.5x15 to be that footage. How many people live in it? Not saying it's impossible, 4 of us lived in an 8x10 space for months. I just have to wonder if it dropped a number on you?

I've been very interested in the thread, I wish I could list something that's made me a profit, but I am lucky if I get a good percentage of my feed bill... <sigh>

no, he lives in a tiny house. It is all on his blog, pics and everything. Many of us followed it closely when he was building it to see what we could learn. That is the benefit of this place though; people are teaching with out ever knowing it, just by sharing how they live. I learn something new here on HT every day.

Cindyc.