And on that farm he had a …

Farm Animals Compared (Part 2, Large Animals)

[I seem to have missed posting anything last week. I thought I had something scheduled, but I guess I neglected to do so. Sorry! And, yes, I’m posting “Part 2” of this two-part series before “Part 1” because “Part 2” was ready to go before “Part 1.” So why not just call this “Part 1”? Well, it seems to me that most people are likely to start a farm or homestead with poultry, the subject of my intended “Part 1” and thus that (once I’ve posted both parts) the one on poultry will be the most reasonable place to begin.]

I thought someone might be interested in a comparison of various farm animals in terms of pros and cons, so here are my relatively quick thoughts on the various farm animals we have had on our homestead (and maybe a few we haven’t had). Someone I read (I think it was Joel Salatin) suggested a would-be farmer start with standard animals rather than exotic ones (chickens rather than emus, sheep instead of alpaca) because one can readily find resources for common animals and because there are reasons why the common animals became so (due to things like productivity and ease of care). That advice seems reasonable. Indeed, we have only had common animals thus far—though we have favored “heritage” or “primitive” breeds. What follows is an account of why we chose each species and breed and our experiences with them thus far, in order of when they arrived on our homestead (and more or less the order in which we initially sought them)—but divided into two posts (Part 1: Poultry; Part 2: Large Animals) so as not to make a post unduly long.

Pigs

Except in cases wherein dietary restrictions are involved, almost everyone loves bacon, and homemade sausage is both tasty and free of questionable ingredients. And the other cuts of pork make great crockpot meals. Our family (currently two adults and five young children) can go through a whole pig fairly quickly (in about three months, it seems), but they’re known for being quite efficient producers of meat. With a small enough population they can probably survive on free slop, but we have certainly supplemented their diets with grain—especially after we got a sow for breeding. They can be difficult to contain and move, but they follow a grain bucket fairly well, and we hear they respond well to certain arrangements of electric fencing (Joel Salatin’s model) even if we’ve had trouble containing them with electric netting. If they get loose pigs can root up a garden or lawn, but when directed their rooting also provides what a farmer I know calls “wise tillage.” Our biggest difficulty with pigs has certainly been containment, and they also demand a fair bit of food—but the sausage is superb. I wouldn’t want to be a pig farmer as such, but I’d like to figure out the numbers such that we’re slaughtering about four per year for our own use, raised mostly on slop or excess garden produce, and selling piglets to pay for the maintenance of the breeding pair.

We started with three Berkshire weaner boars because they were a heritage breed available from a respected breeder relatively near us, but after we narrowed those down to our breeding boar we had some difficulty sourcing a sow, so we purchased a couple Idaho Pasture Pig (IPP) feeder barrows (castrated boar piglets). We wanted pigs (the Berkshires) that would root for that “wise tillage,” but I’m interested to see how the IPPs do on pasture this summer. (They aren’t supposed to root.) I might even try grazing them right alongside the sheep and cow.

UPDATE: Since beginning to write out these thoughts the weather has warmed and the grass grown enough to start getting animals on pasture. The sheep had one day outside before a late snowstorm blanketed the ground for about a day—preceded by a soggy rain that has kept the field wet—and the IPP piglets have been outside 24/7 for a few days now, doing just fine under snow and rain and some very high winds—even after they knocked down the old shelter I hastily repaired for them (and, alas, now need to repair more sturdily). I was hoping the IPPs would do at least a little rooting in our old garden area to prepare it for this year’s planting, and I was pleased to see they did just enough to uproot the grass and weeds and cover-crop clover that had grown through the garden bed but not so much as to make going back through it and leveling the ground particularly difficult. Compared to our Berkshires (two of which we have since eaten and one of which is our breeding boar), the IPPs also seem to be much less interested in breaking through the electric fence—whether due to differences of breed or testosterone (the IPPs having been castrated before we got them).

Sheep

We ordered (and received) pigs, sheep, chicks, and ducklings more or less at the same time, and they comprised our whole menagerie for a few months (until we got a dairy cow). We planned to get geese and quail immediately too but had trouble sourcing them our first season. We knew we wanted a dairy animal, and we wanted a dual-purpose breed (for meat and milk). We assumed we might start with goats because the farmer friends who in many ways were our inspiration and models raise goats, but somehow we learned of tri-purpose breeds of sheep (good for meat, milk, and wool), of which a good heritage breed is the Icelandic, which were also intriguing due to their natural variations in the color and texture of their fleece. So, at the recommendation of an up-and-coming breeder relatively near us, we decided on a breeding trio of Icelandics (a ram lamb, a ewe lamb, and a proven ewe).

Frankly, were I starting over I’d save sheep for later. We’re still interested in the possibilities for weaving and such that sheep provide, but as yet we’ve not had much luck keeping fleece clean, processing it ourselves, or finding suitable professional processors. Moreover, we lost our proven ewe to an electric fence our first fall, before she was able to provide us with the expected twin lambs, so that year we only ended up with one ewe lamb (for newly lambing ewes typically only have one lamb). If we’d had at least one ram lamb, we could have tried slaughtering a lamb, and if we’d had two nursing ewes we might have found milking them worthwhile. But by the time our single ewe had her single lamb, we already had a dairy cow in milk (and her calf to keep an eye on). So over eighteen months after getting three sheep, we had … three sheep.

Our second lambing season offered a second chance to double the size of our flock, but unfortunately the ewe that had been born to us the prior spring had a difficult labor (a few weeks after her mother had twins) and died the following day. Her single lamb seemed to have died some time before labor had started, so it wasn’t able to move around and get into the proper position for birth. I ultimately had to pull the deceased lamb from the ewe’s womb, and although that experience certainly wasn’t pleasant it was at least educational. Under the circumstances (as with the first ewe we lost), we decided to butcher the ewe not for our own consumption (though the meat looked good) but for the practice and for dogfood.

In terms of confinement, sheep are easy to keep in a stall in a barn because they aren’t as rough on the walls as are pigs and cows (though our ram smashes into the walls from time to time just to remind everyone how hard-headed he is) and they aren’t likely to try to break out (though our ewe gets so excited about oats that she gets awfully close to jumping right over the wall). They’re also easier to confine in the field to the extent that they can be contained with electric netting that a cow will try to walk right through or a pig will likely short out by rooting up dirt around the bottom wires. That said, we did lose that one ewe to electric netting, and another of our ewes has gotten her horns stuck in the fence a few times when I had left it off. (A different style of electric netting would probably be better in this regard.) Unfortunately, sheep are faster runners than cows and more skittish, so when the sheep inevitably get out of the fence a series of frustrations tends to ensue, whereas when the cow gets out of the fence I can simply grab her collar and redirect her. The sheep’s horns are like built-in handles, though, and they follow a feed bucket fairly well (though perhaps not as well as a pig).

In terms of more regular care, sheep are easy to keep in a stall in a barn because they’re droppings are so hard and dry and because they don’t urinate nearly as much as a cow or a pig: I can easily keep our sheep on the same bedding all winter long (as some of it breaks down and it’s augmented a little bit by the hay they spill while eating). The cow’s stall, on the other hand, needs constant mucking. Sheep also need less of everything than cows or pigs (hay, grain, water, even space); of course, in return, they provide less meat (and milk).

Overall, I still think Icelandics are good animals to have on a farm, but the main benefit I’ve received from them thus far is a greater understanding of all the biblical allusions to sheep.

Cows

I wrote a review essay fairly recently about Keeping a Family Cow, so I’ll try to avoid repeating myself too much here. The main thing I want to do here is compare keeping a cow to keeping sheep and pigs. Of the three, it’s safe to say that pigs are the most challenging, and I’d say sheep are the least challenging, all things considered (for the reasons mentioned above). Of the three, cows require the most water (at least ones that are in milk), but pigs tend to spill theirs. Cows also require more food than pigs overall and substantially more than sheep, but most of their food (all, for those not in milk) can be hay, which is generally less expensive and easier to store and easier to produce oneself than grain.

As I mention in the aforementioned post, though, the cows’ production is far greater than that of the pigs or sheep, especially in terms of milk and meat, but also manure, which is both a blessing and a curse. The pigs’ waste is the most objectionable of the three (as a farmer friend of mine once said, “it’s too human”), but at least when a cow is both in milk and being kept in the barn one has to deal with her manure much more frequently (usually daily) than one has to deal with the manure of pigs or cattle raised for meat. Although such isn’t my preference, with my current setup I can keep our bull and pigs in the same places all winter without having to muck out their spaces (provided I can cover wet and messy spots with hay or straw or wood shavings with some frequency); of course, putting off mucking in this way only leaves a larger mess to deal with eventually, but thankfully it starts to break down and turn to compost even as it sits there.

Ee Ai Ee Ai Oh

Ultimately, as I say in the post on Keeping a Family Cow, I’d recommend that anyone thinking of keeping large livestock (basically anything beyond poultry) begin with a dairy cow, then move to pigs (or get them concurrently with the cow) but wait to bother with sheep—unless one has fairly strict limits on the availability of feed or the ability to muck a stall regularly. I’d like to get a draft horse sooner rather than later so I can cut hay without having to use a tractor or a scythe; the draft horse sounds like a happy medium. We actually began to purchase a bred mare, but she died unexpectedly under our neighbor’s care before we had finalized the purchase. I’d also like to get some goats for the purposes of meat production and overall diversity (especially in terms of forage, but also in aesthetics). There aren’t really any other large animals that interest me at this point (whether bison or true buffalo or riding horses or something else I haven’t considered). I’d be happy to hear the thoughts of others on these animals or to answer questions about them if I can.