Chickens – They are easy and cheap to purchase from a hatchery like McMurry. 10 female chicks costs less than $25, and the trusty US Post Office delivers them. 10 chickens should produce at least 1/2 dozen eggs a day for about 2 to 3 years. I don’t think it's feasible to keep a rooster, because although it would both protect the hens and service them to create new chicks, it also makes a lot of noise. And one acre isn’t large enough to shield the neighbors from unwanted noise. Also too many chickens on a plot of land will scratch it to mud in short order. If I put half of the acre to pasture and fruit crops, 10 chickens can free range and hopefully not cause too much damage.
Also for a short-term project, I might also order 25 for meat. Chickens take some time to reach egg laying maturity, but for meat purposes, they reach the proper weight in just a couple of months.
Geese – They eat grass. Some varieties are less noisy. And I just want one. They’re good watchdogs and can be raised for meat as well. Mother EarthNews has an interesting article on geese.
Guinea fowl – I’d really like a couple of these. I understand they’re excellent bug catchers, even in around edible garden plants. (Chickens and geese will both eat the garden produce and plants.) However, Guinea fowl are known for their very loud calls, something I’m sure the neighbors will not appreciate.
Goats – Nancy wanted goats. But I’ve read that solitary animals get destructive for lack of company. We could raise them for slaughter, but I'm not sure I can serve that much goat meat to family and friends. Nancy thought they would make cute pets, and they would,but with limited browsing range, that's a boatload of feed every day for years. I think having a daily supply of fresh goat's milk is their best argument. How cool would it be to experiement with cheese making, not to mention a supply of butter, yogurt and icecream? But neither Nancy nor I are ready for the investment of time required to milk them at least once a day, no breaks, no vacations. Hmmm. We changed our mind.
Cows – Too much animal, not enough room.
Turkeys – I’ve heard they can be mean. And beside we’ll already have chickens.
Pigs – Now this is a possibility. As with chickens, pigs are often raised to slaughter weight. This can be done in a summer. I’ve read that allowing it some free range and giving it plenty of carbon (hay) in its diet greatly reduces odors. We’ll see. I’d have to find a place that would butcher it, a task I could do myself, but there are issues with weather temperature, firearms (if we end up within city limits), how visible we are to neighbors, cool storage, etc. Walter at Sugar Mountain Farm has a wealth of knowledge and a great perspective on raising pigs.
Rabbits – Many homesteaders use rabbits as a meat source, but they all seem to keep the animals in cages. I want any animal I keep to have as good a life as possible. Chickens should lead chickeny lives with lot of scratching space, greenery and bugs. The same goes for pigs, cows and geese; each should have space to forage and do what comes natural to them. So…no rabbits.
Fish – One of the healthiest forms of animal protein. I got all excited about fishing locally here in Florida until I read warnings limiting the amount of freshwater fish you can eat because of contaminates in the water. That astounded me. Then I researched aquaculture and I think it can be tailored to small farm or even to an individual household use. In many parts of the world, it seems that fish is the first and often only source of protein people seek out. It can often be caught, free fro the taking. The farmers let nature grow their livestock for them. But in a more controlled environment, it is still economical in terms of space, feed and time. You need a large tank of water, a source of fish fingerlings, a method of filtering waste, and a source of feed. It’s just a large scale aquarium. (And when I say a large tank, I’m referring to 1000 gallons or more.) James Rakocy wrote an interesting technical article on tank aquaculture of Tilapia, and small scale aquaculture is even promoted in urban settings.
Ducks – I seriously considered ducks for a while, and may come back around to them again. From what I’ve read, they can be a good an egg layer as some chickens and are excellent meat birds to boot. But I’ve also heard they can be messy and I’d want to provide them with a small pond; something I’m not sure I can buy or build.
Bees – Yes, there is the honey, but I’m more interested in keeping a small hive for pollination. The goal of a farm is to produce food, and the better pollination, the better the crop. Zoning laws determine how far away hives must be kept from other residences, but I think it’s closer than you might imagine. Think of it as a larger, more complicated version of an ant farm that produces honey and pollinators. Honey bees are not pests like yellow jackets; they just want to get about their business of seeking nectar. Michael Bush has a great website on apiculture.
So, keeping the above in mind, I’m thinking my ONE ACRE FARM will include approximately:
- 10 chickens for eggs
- Occasionally 25 additional chickens for meat
- Tank grown tilapia
- A bee hive
- 1 goose
- Perhaps an occasional pig
6 comments:
Interesting ideas, I like your thoughts on the subject.
Yes I would say Walter is an expert when it comes to pigs!
Regards.
hello there... i have all the animals you mention sans duck and guinea, and add a horse and a mini, all on one acre and half... it can be done. gotta be organized though.
The bee hive was just what i was researching GOOD beginner article in HOBBY FARM magazine this month.
Pigs? well they cause the most damage. i only have one and he's a pet... or pest however you look at it.
Goats? perfect milk cheese, icecream. and yes you need a minimum of two to keep them quiet and happy. and there is a bit of ruminant learning curve. but i have 3 hoping for more...
chickens.. highlight of the day. every day. fresh eggs. Rooster? i have three.. if you can have livestock on an acre you can have a rooster. and they only crow in the am. 90% of people that live rural have to be up to get to the city early anyhow is how i look at it...
can't wait to read more on your blog. i wanna move too.. you know out here in West Palm ain't too bad.
jojo,
I'm so glad to hear from someone who has succeeded on a small acreage. It sounds like you have a zoo on your property. I agree that organization is the key; not only in caring for the animals, but in how the farm is physically laid out. I'm interested in giving the animals a good quality of life while they are with me. It's the least I can do since I'm planning to use them or even eat them. My wife and I had a conversation just this evening about goats. She wants them, but I'm insisting only on productive animals (being the ogre of the family). Our compromise may be that she and Sam milk them each day. I can justify the space and feed if we're getting milk.
The flipside is I'm also a bit cheap and want to buy as little feed as possible. I'd like to free-range the goats but I'm concerned as to whether a half acre or so of pasture can support two goats and a few chickens. In Florida, we do have green pasture most of the year, unless we get a few frosts.
Bill: Yes, get Goats!
My wife and I have 1.2-ac just outside of Edgewater, FL with about 0.6-ac uncleared which will be our pasture. We will be purchasing a pair of Nigerian Dwarf goats soon and will initially tether them until we can cut down the pines and establish a pasture, keeping a good deal of natural browse and planting some more. Grass in FL is year-round, establishing a warm season perennial and over seeding with ryegrass each winter. By my calculations, and considering that the soil in the pasture is basically beach sand, we can support a herd of 6-8 of these miniture dairy goats (two or three milkers and their kids for meat or to sell). We will manage them intensively, dividing the pasture into 4 or 8 paddocks and moving them weekly or more often. The University of Minnesota Extension Service has a good publication on this titled "Grazing Systems Planning Guide" that you can get online. We won't keep mature males, as they smell bad and we won't have room to separate them from the females. There is a ready market for any dairy products that we'd have to sell, should we have surplus.
About chickens: If you totally free range, then yes 10-layers is about all you probably could do. However, I strongly suggest that you obtain Joel Salatin's book "Pastured Poultry Profits" which describes how he raises his meat birds. We are the only people in my area doing intensive broiler production (20-25 in a 7x5-ft pen on pasture, moving them one cage length per day or more frequently as needed). We also have raised our own Rhode Island White egg layers in this same intensive method and have some White Leghorns that will start laying in a month or two that are also in intensive pasture pens. Our chickens, all three pens, move around our back yard which is probably 125x75-ft with a few newly planted orange trees too. When its a while between rains (which wash the manure into the soil as fertilizer), we move them into the "orchard" (our side yard that we have planted in many varieties of fruit trees). The chickens have improved our soil from weak, pale grass with sand showing through into a sod so dense and grass so lush that I might need to get a broad fork to loosen and aerate it soon. The manure does not burn the grass if it is fresh and given time to incorporate between applications. When our goat pasture is established, we will put the chickens in behind the goats to further improve the soil there and we will raise turkeys (either in an empty meat bird pen or free range in the paddocks between the goats and chickens, all on rotation of course). We only have hens, the cockerel meat birds never reach maturity and so are not a nuisance. We purchase from Ideal Poultry in Texas, which has a great reputation and we have never had a dead or sick bird from them (and we don't vaccinate or medicate). If the NAIS comes into law, we have considered keeping roosters and surgically altering their vocal cords, but that is a nuclear option that I'd rather not do. We have an eager market for any eggs or meat that we want to sell, demand easily exceeds supply for food of this quality.
We are keeping our front yard (75x100) as play area for my growing family (oldest is 16-months with another on the way).
About Tilapia: In Volusia County, and most of South and Central Florida, you can own Blue Tilapia without a permit (some species are banned, some are permitted due to invasive conerns). We have determined that an above ground pool, 12-ft in diameter with 2.5-ft of water depth will supply all the tilapia that my family will need in the near future and even some surplus that will be useful as my children grow. Our filter will be a 55-gal drum with egg shells or oyster shells (basically, a CaCO3 (i.e. lime) substrate) to provide the pH control and a place for teh cleansing bacteria to anchor. Tilapia are mostly vegetarians and will thrive on algae and mosquito larvae. The only concern is keeping the water temperature up (and dissolved oxygen, but that's not really hard). Even though we're in Central Florida, the fish need 10-months in 80-deg water, so some means of greenhousing the pool will be employed.
I'm glad to hear that you're thinking about aquaculutre. I haven't found anyone around here doing that. We'll probably get started on that in about 3-yrs, after we get comfortable with our goats.
Our measure on what to keep is the same as yours: if it doesn't feed us, we don't feed it. So we don't water our front lawn, but we do tend to our garden, fruit trees and Muscadine grape vines. Our only limitation due to acreage is that we can't grow grains for us or our chickens. However, I've been tasting some of the acorns in the area and think I might plant some oak trees in the pasture to harvest their nuts as grain.
Check out my wife's blog at: pindalepalace.blogspot.com. She just started it, but we'll be writing about our research and experience there.
Keep in touch! -Randy
Randy,
Thanks for the comment. Walter Jeffries posted a blog on his experiencing raising pigs and the amount of required land per pig needed that he found beneficial for the livestock and the environment. You might find it interesting. See his Oct, 12, 2007 post at http://sugarmtnfarm.com/blog/.
I have urban farmed a 1/10 of an acre in a major city for over 20 years now. I keep between 3 and 4 hens at a time which produce all of the eggs that we need. If you keep a productive breed of hen, like an Ameraucana or one of the sex-links they will produce well over 250 eggs EACH per year. I keep my hens for two years then to the soup pot they go! On my property I raise peaches, nectarines, plumbs, cherries, three varieties of grapes as well as salad greens, green beans, tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers and other veggies.
I supplement my gardens by "farming" a 1/4 acre vacant lot (with the owners permission) near my house. I raise between 30 and 50 broilers per year as well as half a dozen turkeys by using property at my daughters house for the short term project in trade for filling her freezer as well.
Guinea fowl and geese are hard to keep quiet as are roosters, so they are off limits for me. Guinea fowl are also very hard to contain.
In the past we have also raised rabbits for the table, which is quite easy and profitable if you can bring yourself to do the butchering! I have not tried bees due to the nearness of the neighbors.
With planning much is possible, but remember to start small and work up and check your local zoning laws FIRST. You might be surprised. Chickens are legal in my city.
For a GREAT site for beginners to the homesteading idea check out http://www.uBuilderPlans.com They have great information and even have some very helpful "how-to" lessons!
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