Do your animals pay for themselves?

...animals pay for themselves?

Not a chance here...

I imagine that for most folks, present company excepted maybe, some creative accounting is highly necessary to show a profit on livestock.

We make a little bit on a few cattle and lose it feeding dairy goats, rabbits and chickens...

You can keep doing that untill the money runs out...

a lot is volume based, and infrastructure based, and input costs,

one can make or break even with one or few animal, but usually the infrastructure will not let one, fence, water system, shelter (normally),

learning how to feed, is a lot of it as well, I have seen people spend terrific amounts of money on there feed, and wonder why they did not break even, or recupe there investment when selling them.

chickens are hard to break even on IMO, to raise for meat birds, I have read that commercial chicken producers are only making about 10 cents a bird, and there getting volume discounts on grain, the chicks and so on,

when one spend a few bucks on a chick, and one does not spend much more at the grocery store hard to do it cheaper,

animals that reproduce one has a better chance, as the off spring can bring about half of a grown animals many times it sold at the correct time,
(bigger is not nessarly always the better) some critters one some times there is more money to be made at a given point in there growth instead of taking them to full growth,

I do not think our chickens make ends meat dollar wise, but I think they do make up for it in bug control, eggs and meat, we bought an incubator, for the eggs to replace the flock,

the goats basically break even, with the milk and the selling of the kids,
milk is provide for two families, and a lot of cheese, and milk for orphan calves if needed. that in it self will save a lot of money right there,

the cattle are my main animal income, I have fair grass acreage and some farm ground I can raise some feed on.

if you can minimize purchased feed (free range) and keep the feed you raise lower cost, use economical grain rations if needed that full fill the animals needs,

My dairy goats make a profit every year because of their milk production. I raise bottle calves on goat's milk, make goat's milk soap, sell the kids, and have a herd share program for other families. My laying hens make a profit but my market supports me getting $4.50 a dozen for my eggs and my girls free-range so I don't have a ton of inputs. My meat birds bring in enough that hubby and I eat chicken all year long for free. So even though there aren't dollars in the bank from them, there are 50 chickens in the freezer.
My beef cattle are not profitable at this time BUT we are just getting started with them. We are on target to bring a little provide from them next year.
My horse, well, he doesn't bring anything to the farm except for how much I love him and, as I tell my husband, he is cheaper then therapy.

I currently have no animals however ithe past I believe I saved more money on human feed when I had a dairy cow, meat sheep, goats, pigs and chickens then I spent on animal feed. I would use all four gallons of milk for drinking, making yogurt, cheese etc. She mostly ate pasture and hay which was dirt cheap and occassionally oats including leftovere oatmeal from breakfast with molassass on it. Have i mentioned anywhere else i miss my pet cow. Most of the meat was butchred at home, I didn't kill but I did the cleaning, cutting and cooking, lol. The goats and lambs were on pasture, hay and a little oats because kids love hand feeding fuzzy critters. The pigs on the other hand I'm not sure if we broke even with or not, they ate well like pigs, lol. If anything the chickens may have been most expensive, but then again the only thing evere sold was a few dozen eggs every now and then, so that covered some of their feed.
But overall I am quite confident that we saved more in human feed than we put into animal feed. However that's not counting the sun up to sun down labor I put into the farm, that was free of course and worth every penny of it

Food isn't free, in fact its quite expensive for good food. If I sell just enough to cover expenses and get a freezer full of food that would have cost me 2k, then I have profited 2K.

We do, however, usually sell a bit more than enough to cover expenses. So not only do I profit by getting 2K worth of organically raised, clean food, but I get paid to eat it.

A big part of coming out ahead on a farm ( and I feel not enough people consider this ), is raising animals that you can feed off of your own land. I raise animals that can do well on grass, because I have grass. If I wanted to raise a grain animal I wouldnt do it unless I was able to raise the grain.

The $20 goat I buy in Spring some years to clear out the overgrowth and barbeque in the Fall is well worth the $20 I pay for it in both brush mowing savings and a few weeks of meat.

My dogs and cats pretty well pay for themselves in the fact they serve me as service, draft and security dogs in addition to being constant company and the cats kill rodents and snakes around the place.

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"I didn't have time to slay the dragon. It's on my To Do list!"

Absolutely! I raise bees. They make a couple of high value products. They themselves are valuable and easy to propagate. Plus they greatly improve my garden yield.

I'm starting over due to a few moves, so I bought all new equipment. They will have paid for themselves and all the new equipment within a year(as long as I show restraint and don't buy that high volume extractor) and will start making a nice profit the 2nd year.

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My 6 chickens do not pay for the shed that we put up to house them. And the bought feed is a couple of dollars a month more than the worth of the eggs that we eat: we do share excess eggs with the dog and the chickens (cooked and crushed, of course, or I wold teach them that eggs are edible and they would eat them all)

Then again if you look at just the feed, some years they do make a profit and some years they do not. For example, when the kids were small I would give them the kid's leftover half-eaten sandwiches, apple cores, and so forth and YES I made a profit on the chickens and a good one! Years that I have to buy all of the feed can give me expensive eggs, but when feed is cheaper (or provided by the homestead) the eggs are cheaper.

And, some people use their sheds for more than keeping just 6 chickens. Many people keep MORE than 6 and SELL eggs and chicks or also raise meat chickens in their sheds. I can pencil out profit on raising meat chickens in the shed and giving them home raised feed, but I do not WISH to raise meat chickens, sell eggs, or raise enough feed for a large flock. I simply prefer to have a small flock of layers, and feed them partially from the garden and partially from bought feeds.

So, while I know how to make a profit on chickens I would simply rather spend $6 a month on feed, eat the cost of the shed, and enjoy my brightly colored flock of 6 birds and eat all of the eggs we want. (I feed any excess back to them, hard boiled and crushed)

For those people who may want to know, my figures are these: My family can use a chicken a week, which is 52 birds that cost $6 a bird *IF* I only buy on sale. If I keep a solid dual purpose hen and incubate her chicks then she should easily give me enough eggs. To keep from having a huge flock in a small shed I would incubate (or let a hen incubate) about a dozen at a time. When figuring in losses and infertile eggs 7 batches should do. If the hen incubates the chicks that would likely take her a year and it would be hard to raise chicks mid winter here, but if an incubator were used that should be easy as the fertile eggs could all be produced in 3-4 months.

Feed. I would figure on giving them home-raised corn, peas, beans, alfalfa, oyster shell, garden waste, excess eggs, some forage, I would set up a bug breeding station, and for the sake of security a small amount of bought feed POSSIBLY. The Cornish Crosses, I hear, need mostly bought feed but the traditional dual purpose breeds are much less demanding.

So, 52 birds worth $6 each would give me a value of over $300, some of which would be used to buy feeders and such but much of which could be used to cover the cost of the shed. The shed and the set-up costs would be covered within a few years and after that the flock would show a profit.

And, many people say that a bird raised organically is worth more than $6 each. I tend to agree but many people will not. So I took the conservative view.

I only have chickens and I COULD make a profit off of them but I do not.

They sure are fun, though.

So far we haven't really done animals for money. We sold some of our turkeys for Thanksgiving and I've sold eggs here and there but for the most part they feed us and that's it. When we bought a calf and grew it we ate it ourselves, no selling. When I get goats the milk will just be for us. Maybe someday we'll get more into selling stuff but for now, it's just for us.

My egg sales for chickens and ducks cover the feed bills for all of our livestock. We get piglets when milk and eggs are at their peak production and feed them up on oatmeal, milk and eggs. Once they get bigger they are out on pasture and foraging for nuts and stuff and we don't have to feed a lot of grain. Generally we sell half a hog to cover processing for ours too. So our animals more than pay for themselves.

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"You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me." C S Lewis

It doesnt matter to me. I keep my sheep for my own wool to hand spin. I love the sheep and the wool. My angora rabbits, again, I have them for my own spinning and knitting. My chickens are truly fresh eggs for my family. Our dogs are our best friends.
I get so much pleasure from my animals, no money could buy the smiles I get from my critters. Any income from them is just icing on the cake.
The animals are truly a labor of love here.
We just love having them.

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"We spend money we don't have on things we don't need to create impressions that won't last on people we don't care about."
~T.Jackson

My site.

In my opinion, getting paid in meat and eggs *IS* getting paid!

At the end of the year the tax man takes roughly 1/3 to 1/4 of what we all earn, so $1 saved on eggs is the same as $1.33 earned!!!!!!!!

And then there is that lovely manure to use for fertilizer as well,

Would you elaborate on feeding pork to the chickens? Raw, cooked...? Thanks! Oh and also, raw or cooked eggs for the pigs?

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http://tinksquared.com

Only if they want to stay

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The internet - fueling paranoia and misinformation since 1873.

I wanted my animals to pay for themselves, but they didn't have any money. Seth

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If you need anything, just let me know... I'll tell you how to do without it.

Honestly the bulk of our farm income is from cattle. We sell $40-45k annually.

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If you need anything, just let me know... I'll tell you how to do without it.

Poop, eat things they should not and scare raccoons.

I have a plan (not in place yet) with heritage natural turkeys that the trukeys will (already discussed with a local butcher shop) not only pay for themselves, but for the chicken food for our layers and hay for the rabbits.

So, we get eggs, chicken and rabbit (and a couple turkeys) for free.

I need 4-6 hens and a couple toms.

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Roger

If saving money is one's only reason for having animals then it's probably a lost cause. I'm sure we could buy everything cheaper at Walmart. Are grasshopper fed chickens, and their eggs, cheaper than those from the super market? Probably not, but they sure taste better.

But because of all the manure shoveling, barn and fence building, taking the goats out for hikes, firewood cutting, garden digging, etc, my wife and I don't have any expenses with cardiologists, oncologists, psychologists, or pharmacists.

Feeding Eggs to Pigs:
We keep 300 to 500 chickens for their organic pest control. We live out in the woods and up hill of a marsh. Lots of black flies, mosquitoes and horseflies. Well, there used to be but we got chickens. They were extremely effective. So I got more chickens. They keep an area about 1,000' in radius from their base station pretty free of bothersome insects. They probably eat a few bees too, unfortunately but I still see lots of bees so not so bad. The chickens also break up dung and smooth the soil as well as producing tens of thousands of eggs. We cook many (most?) of the eggs and then concentrate their feeding towards the younger pigs where they have the greatest benefit maximizing our leverage.

Feeding Pigs to Chickens:
In the winter there are no insects for the chickens to eat. They still eat mice but need more protein and fat than a few skinny mice. We butcher pigs every week, selling year round. There are always some bits of trim that are not salable. Some of these get given to the chickens - generally cooked so they can digest it even more easily. This is easy to do - we heat with wood. The chickens also appreciate the warm pork broth.

Cheers,

-Walter Jeffries
Sugar Mountain Farm
Pastured Pigs, Sheep & Kids
in the mountains of Vermont
http://SugarMtnFarm.com/

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SugarMtnFarm.com -- Pastured Pigs, Poultry, Sheep, Dogs and Kids

Still on my "urban farm", and lately our animals have been of the more unusual variety, but I would say the answer is "yes".

Some of my animals themselves actually have off-farm jobs (I use raptors and one of my dogs for bird control...and raptors and both my dogs for hunting, but the latter is for fun). I raise rabbits to augment food for ourselves AND for our animals; my rabbits get a large portion of their food from what I grow specifically for them; the balance is quality rabbit pellet.

I used to raise quail to feed the raptors (and ourselves) but it's too much a PITA to do in confinement. Will try again on our new property, maybe down the road. Now, I purchase them from a trusted supplier, and raise homing pigeons for fun and hawk food. I also trap pigeons, and after a short quarantine and look-over, they feed the raptors.

Scraps are fed to the rats (which, again, feed the raptors). Feathers, additional scraps, etc., feed red wiggler worms and soldier fly larvae (also fed to rats, will be fed to chickens when we get them again). Rat bedding (coconut coir/wood pellets) goes into SFL project as well as to worm bins, which produce fertilizer for gardens. Pigeon, rabbit poop goes into compost bin, as well. SFL and worm compost goes right into garden beds.

I also experimented with Dubia cockroaches as a food-source for pets, and possible sale to local pet stores/reptile owners. Pretty easy operation, and can be marketed with soldier fly larvae, rabbits and rats. Quail, too, as some reptiles prefer avian prey.

Red wiggler composting worms can sell direct for as much as $30/lb, but is pretty labor intensive on a small scale. But they more than pay for themselves, and I've sold more than a few pounds to friends who wanted to start their own bins.

Really, it's all about being creative, and finding projects that fit well with one another, your property, local markets, and your life. You need to consider what your time is worth when caring for them and deciding what inputs you need to support them and your sanity, and as mentioned above, the immeasurable benefits of working with livestock (be they two-legged, four-legged or six-legged...or zero-legged!)