Deciding on Miniature Livestock

Get electric netting, 4’ tall. You will be able to make your pens larger or smaller, move the fence to rotate grazing, create lanes, and so on. When you are set on how many goats you want you can then set up permanent fencing exactly the way you need it and use the electric netting when you want them to mow your lawn. I don’t understand why you can’t run the chickens and goats together.

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Nothing is as strong as gentleness, nothing so gentle as real strength - St. Francis de Sales

You can run goats and chickens together, but you can't feed them together. Chicken feeds often contain ingredients that aren't good for goats.

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Alice
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"No great thing is created suddenly." ~Epictitus

On the subject of goaty milk the colder it is the less you taste it and after a month of drinking goat milk you no longer notice it. I didn't think you could get butter from goat milk as it doesn't separate the cream out like cows milk does. I strongly agree that a miniature goat would probably be better. Goats remind me of raptors in Jurassic Park, when you look into their eyes you can see they are working things out.

Yes, you can get butter from goat cream. It is slow to rise to the top of the milk, and you have to skim and freeze the cream till you get enough to make butter, or you can use a separator.

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Alice
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"No great thing is created suddenly." ~Epictitus

Three chickens? I'd get at least 6.

As far as mini breeds, I'd suggest skipping them. If you go with a mini anything, then I'd suggest buying a doe already in milk so you can make sure you can milk those tiny teats.

Just my $.02, but I really don't care for small breeds of anything. In my opinion, 2 standard sized goats don't take up much more room or eat that much more feed than 2 minis, but they'll produce way more milk and will likely have much more hand-milking-friendly teats. You could not pay me to raise Nigis, but gosh they are cute to look at.

I love Oberhaslis, because they are usually on the smaller size of the standard breeds, but are quiet and docile and have wonderful milk.

If you are going to do sheep and goats, I'd recommend more sheep than goats because goats are the outgoing and bully-ish ones, sheep are usually mroe inclined to let the goats pick on them. I'd say at least 2 or 3 sheep and 2 goats.

Three acres is a lot if you're only talking about a handful of small ruminants. I have one acre, half graze-able, and I've got 3 Oberhaslis, 4 adult ewes, and 3 lambs at the moment. Of course that's maxed out and a few more than what I'd like to have, but I'll reduce my numbers going into winter. I have to be really careful to rotate my pastures, and to use a sacrifice lot to preserve what pasture I do have, but it works for me and I work hard at managing it.

Three acres can hold quite a few goats and sheep if you've got good pastures. But I understand wanting to start small to "get your toes wet."

My Mini-Alpine had regular size teats.

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Alice
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"No great thing is created suddenly." ~Epictitus

I'd advise you to beware of getting Muscovy ducks - or any ducks! In my experience with them, they quickly turn the livestock water tanks into SEPTIC TANKS. I'm not kidding! I had to dump, clean, and refill water tanks on a DAILY basis, sometimes more than once a day because of the ducks' habits!

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Treat me like a joke, and I'll walk away like it's funny.
Effervescent, irreverent and irrepressible, but (almost)never irritable or irascible!

Udders on 2 of my First Generation Mini Manchas.

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Treat me like a joke, and I'll walk away like it's funny.
Effervescent, irreverent and irrepressible, but (almost)never irritable or irascible!

The udders on 3 of my Second Generation Mini Manchas.







L

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Treat me like a joke, and I'll walk away like it's funny.
Effervescent, irreverent and irrepressible, but (almost)never irritable or irascible!

That's great you two have had good luck with good teat size. Crosses to make mini-animals can be unpredictable sometimes, so that's why I recommended she may want to find a doe already in milk so she can evaluate the teats. And I see people all the time talking about how they need to make milkers out of syringes because they can't hand milk. Just wanted to write a word of caution because it's no fun having milk goats if milking them is painful or hard to do.

Ditto on duck mess. Yuk.

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Alice
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"No great thing is created suddenly." ~Epictitus

Oh, there's no question it's possible, and you need to keep the possibilities under control. Channel what they CAN do into what you prefer, rather than into what they prefer. MANAGE them, in other words.
Still, you need to control access to water anyway, or you'll end up with sparrows and mice drowned and West Nile all through it. Keep a small trough with controlled access through welded mesh, so ducks dunk beaks, but don't poop in it, and you don't have a huge amount to clean daily. If you have the water to spare, then a wading pool to empty every day or two - maybe three times weekly - makes a great nitro-phosphorous soup for vegetables where what you pick doesn't touch the ground; and maybe also for thick-skinned things like for melons, squash and pumpkins; beets, mangels and chard; turnips, rutabagas and kohl rabi; kale, chou mouellier, Brussels sprouts and broccoli; or for grasses like grain sorghum, maize or sugar cane.

Don't forget Coturnix quail are a good highly-productive and fairly quiet egg-and-meat breed that often slides past local government restrictions, and introduces a bit of variety. So do Silky "Bantams", and say three of those turn their productivity into self-governed brooding machines for almost any kind of eggs.

If you are truly open minded there is a thread on the Rabbit board about raising Cavies (Cuy) for meat. Minimal caretaking if pastured and no leftovers.
It may be a page or two back by now. FB also has a Raising Cuy group, but she won't let you join if your' not already raising them. You can lurk though.

Well, it isn't pure luck. I do breed for easy-milking udders, although they don't always turn out this well! I completely agree that it's painful to milk teeny-tiny teats!

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Treat me like a joke, and I'll walk away like it's funny.
Effervescent, irreverent and irrepressible, but (almost)never irritable or irascible!

I have a couple of questions for you: how do you plan to breed your doe? Are you looking to raise your own meat to butcher at all?

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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

Oh, we definitely would not be feeding them together. I know how big of a hassle it was to keep the pygmy out of the chicken scratch too! Aggravating as all heck. Hubby made a innocent mention of possibly getting a miniature Jersey yesterday, so we MAY look into that in a few years but I am much more interested in goats. There are ways to get butter from goat's milk, so it would definitely be worth at least a try! And indeed, they do remind me of raptors now that you mention it!!

LOL MDKatie; you sound like me. =D Three is what I'm /starting/ out with HAHA. I have heard both sides of the argument for and against mini breeds. I would definitely be more open to looking at getting two standard sized does if my hubby wasn't already afraid of livestock; I'm trying to show him that they aren't all evil and can hurt him/me. I haven't heard too awful much about Obers, but gosh they are BEAUTIFUL. I think we did decide against doing sheep just because of the bully aspect. I'm so thankful we actually have the three acres =) Do your Obers have any goaty flavor to their milk? I suppose really you would indeed get used to it sooner than later. I've always had livestock and NUMEROUS pet animals but I'm not wanting to scare hubby off quite yet

nehimama, that reason exactly is why my family got rid of ducks and never went back! They really are simply disgusting. And we don't have a pond or anything anyway. I don't want to encourage the mosquitoes anymore than they already are! And your girl's udders are WONDERFUL. Mini Manchas are so gorgeous <3 And that is very true; it would be easier to just get a full-size girl in milk than worry about having a good teat size on a mini-breed.

I have absolutely no experience with quail except for button quail and God they stink and are LOUD.

And funny you mentioned rabbits; I was researching rabbits for meat just yesterday! Maybe we will indeed get into raising them when hubby decides to not be such a soft-hearted-fellow. =D As of yesterday, he "couldn't kill such a cute bunny rabbit." Oh, bunny rabbit syndrome!

As for breeding the doe, I would /like/ to start out with a doe in milk to begin with. Then later on, buy a tested buck and keep him separate with a wether from the doe (always seems like they have one LOL). And I am definitely looking into raising meat chickens, and maybe other things later on. I'm not so headshy when it comes to all of this, but hubby, as stated earlier, hasn't even had a pet dog. O.O I don't think he can go all gun-slinger and kill pigs or anything quite yet. He is even headshy to start a garden, for goodness sake.