Do your animals pay for themselves?

Animals on a small farm probably could be profitable. In most cases they likely are not. If you have enough money, the losses may not even be noticeable. If you don't have a lot of money, the losses can drive you to poverty and ruin.

I read somewhere that the typical rural property is on the market about every 5 years.

Reference Joel Salatin's book You Can Farm for a really good treatise on profits and farming.

Certainly there are intangible benefits to keeping animals. But again, without some hard-nosed accounting, many people won't last long with animals. Application of basic accounting will prove this true.

After reading Mr. Salatin's writings for years, it's pretty clear to me that his success is due to a whole host of factors.

Chief among them are the following...

• He's one of the best marketers ever. (He knows about building brands.)
• He's a good and prolific writer.
• He makes lots of high energy speeches all over the place.
• He operates at a large scale with the resulting economies of such. (This is a big deal.)

Small scale agriculture might be profitable, but mostly isn't because of a number of reasons.

Rabbits and Chickens. Nope! Can't give either away, can't sell Eggs. Can't let my Chickens run because too many close neighbors and Dogs.

big rockpile

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I make a little profit but the bees supply the lions share of that. I sell out of honey every year and could sell more if I had it.

The past couple of years I've sold Nucs from splits and swarms I've caught and could easily sell more of them too. I intend to expand the apiary when I retire in a couple of years so that should bring in more income.

I raise 50 or so broilers a year and make no profit off them since they go in our freezer. But, We get superior chicken compared to store bought (imo) so it's well worth it to me. They are raised on pasture and feed so it's a little cheaper than straight feed.

We keep laying hens and all our eggs come from them which saves buying eggs at the store. They free range year round and get supplemental feed in winter. I sell some eggs which helps but probably doesn't cover all the feed costs.

We raise either a beef or pigs yearly depending on cost. Calves are high this year so I've spoken for 3 pigs at $50.00 each. Like everything else, they'll be rotated on pasture with feed added. Two will be butchered for the freezer and one sold to offset the cost of the two that go in the freezers.

The cattle make a little money even after we take a beef for ourselves. We need to rotate our grazing better and not have to feed as much hay, they could do even better. Chickens, no profit, but they do subsidize themselves with extra eggs to sell and by hustling a lot of their own feed by free ranging.

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If you cant at least break even raising animals then you probably are not doing it right. If u raise chickens you have to eat eggs and sell eggs. You also have to sell chickens and eat chickens. You gotta let them find their own food and supplement them in the winter months. Its the same with all animals. I plant things my animals eat. Mostly fruit trees that ripen and different times.

Milk cows yes chickens not right now.Since we are able to sell raw milk we are selling all we get at a good profit.Chickens right now are about used up and it is time to get more.

Easily. That's why I own them, we don't keep pet livestock here.

My commercial sheep paid for themselves with the first year's lamb crop. We do hay on shares, no cost out of my pocket. Sure there is lost opportunity cost for the hay but hay is only $30-50/bale here. Way more profitable to feed it than sell it. Getting together a line of hay equipment to get out of doing shares as our demand is rapidly approaching our supply as we build the flock.
They eat grass all summer, also at no cost to me (other than purchasing the pasture land, and that's an asset not an expense). I do minimal rotational grazing and could probably carry a lot more if I cross fenced.
I fatten my lambs on free grain screenings from a local seed cleaner.

Sheep and cattle, that's where the money is. Cattle are inflated now but wait a few years.

BUT... If you don't have pasture and hay land and are buying inputs - good luck making any money. However I still know a guy who makes a fair living that way with sheep, but he spends most of the summer cutting ditch hay for feed.

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Yes, the sheep and cattle are grass and hay fed and we raise our own hay plus cut neighboring farms that don't raise livestock anymore so it's free to us. The chickens are pastured and free range so they get minimal feed. What cracked corn they get we buy from a neighbor who raises it, sometimes we'll buy some laying mash but that's about all. We sell eggs so that more than covers their little bit of feed plus pays for vet bills if we ever need to call a vet in for anyone. We have a sow that the feed is covered from selling the piglets then she goes to pasture on minimum feed. Are we making big $$? No, but all of the animal costs are covered with and we live this way because we enjoy it not to have it sustain us financially.

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Eleven hens and a rooster pay for themselves in eggs and will pay for themselves in meat, too -- they are buff orps, so they're both prolific layers and good mothers. They're on pasture several months out of the year, and that cuts way down on food bills. One of the hens hatched 11/12 eggs the week before Christmas, got all 11 through single digit weather the week they hatched, and they're now the size of pigeons and fully feathered out. I expect we'll be butchering the males and some of our older hens (with pullets from this clutch replacing them) in a few more months.

The goats are pet Nigerians. I keep trying to convince the rest of the family that we could support a dairy goat on our pasture or breed the Nigies for a kid crop, but no go so far. Our pasture is tiny (around a third of an acre), but we water it, and for several months out of the year, the grass is knee deep. The goats are cheap to keep because we don't have to feed them from around May to November, and the rest of the year, they don't eat all that much. (Flake of hay or a scoop of pellets between the four of them, and they're little butterballs. When the pasture isn't covered in snow, there's still enough greenery out there for them to eat. And if I wanted to get industrious, I could cut manzanita for them to eat and cut the winter feed bill way down -- it's a major weed and fire hazard, everyone wants it gone, but the goats love it.)

The dogs keep elk from jumping the fence, which means we can grow a garden. They earn their keep. (I'd say they kill mice, too, but the catahoula/heeler pup is so obsessive about rodents that she destroys stuff trying to get at them. She ate the engine panels and seat off six wheel Polaris ATV once -- a chipmunk was involved. The dogs dig up planters and the garden and tear up the landscaping when they think there's a mouse hiding in it. So we'd just as soon they left the rodents alone.)

The cats are the single most expensive animal on the place after us. There are nine of them, and they are EXPENSIVE to keep in food and litter. They do keep the mice down, but traps would be cheaper.

Do my animals pay for themselves?

Well, when you consider that a good therapist would cost upwards of $100 an hour, why, yes they do!

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I wouldn't have them if they didn't pay their own way, or make us money. We are fortunate that as farmers, grain, grass and hay, is so abundant and cheap and available. This makes it pretty easy to make critters efficient for us. Eggs cost us about a dollar all costs in, for a pack of 18 which we eat and sell for 5 bucks. Sheep eat hay from our marginal land areas, and graze in those marginal areas that otherwise would be hard to use efficiently for other uses. As time goes on, we add more animals to better use all the space we have available. We plan to fence some of our grain land and to graze the sheep on it in the fall after harvest, for very economical grazing.

We have room for pigs, "Highlands" style, but on a smaller scale, which is one of our future plans. Goats would have the run of a certain willowy area to take advantage of that hunk of land. We are in talks with a farmer friend as we look into putting bison on a secluded, wilder, quarter we have to use it better than cows would.

The sky is the limit, but the limit is time, energy, and mostly the cash to make all our dreams come true.

We will always raise grain, but stock can be and will be used on the non grain areas more in our future. As I get more established in farming, I recognize that being in an area of cheap feed, and abundant feed, more livestock needs to be more aggressively pursued.

I believe in specializing in that certain thing your land is well suited for, and what you are good at doing. But I also believe in using your land to your advantage if you have good diversity.

I have been failing at that. I need to do better at that. I really think the sky is the limit, and the potential is there.

My point is, yes our animals pay. I believe we can use our land better to make them pay even better.