Cheapest way to raise meat to eat

[Wifezilla]

You got some great advice. A hunting license would save you the time and trouble of raising meat yourself. I recently ventured in to the realm of purchasing meat on the hoof. Waiting for delivery on half a pig right now

Coturnix Quail are easy and don't take up a lot of space but you do have to keep them separated from you other poultry. There are diseases ducks and chickens are immune to that will kill off your quail. If you give them a natural setting and raise them on the ground instead of in cages you might even get them to brood. I have a momma with 3 chicks right now.

Rabbits are doable, but I have issues with rabbits. Grandma raised them. My brother is missing the tip of a finger because of an ill-tempered buck, and I have a scar on my belly from another rabbit. They aint all fluff and cute! LOL

Mini-cattle might be an option depending on your space. Irish Dexters are a dual purpose breed (meat/milk).

As for fish...I have looked a little in to that. Hard to find descent information. I thought about perch, but they are pretty much carnivorous. I would have had to get in to raising insects to give them a food source. I know people raise tilapia, but it isn't my favorite fish. I am going to keep researching that topic.

 

[TanksHill]

Aquaponics is getting pretty popular around where I live!

 

[rhoda_bruce]

My answers would not be typical of all the US. I live in south/eastern LA and we eat good here. I only have about an acre and half, but my family (parents and grands) have a lot more, of which, I suppose will one day be mine. A lot of it is forest, with much wild game and a canal running thru, which is home to crawfish and perch.
I do chickens, mainly for eggs and I trade my eggs for deer, wild duck, shrimp (until the BP oil spill), fish, and produce. But this winter, I want DH and DS to get me a few deer and many wild rabbits. Meat is really the most espensive type of grocery we buy.
I do incubate a lot of eggs and eat the extra roos and sell the pullets. I also do a big Easter hatch, which finances a lot of my chicken projects. You can spend more on home grown meat than store bought, just like you can sit and think and come up with ways to make it more affordable. I did the latter. There are a lot of people that will convince you that you can't, but its what you have, what you do and how disciplined you are that decides that.
Say you hatch 100 chicks and raise them to be 3 weeks old and they cost you 20 dollars in feed by that time....50 are roosters and the others are for sale @ 4.00each. You advertise @ the feed stores and pet stores for free and you get about 200 dollars for the pullets. Then you go on feeding the roosters and give them more room and some grass and you can use the money from selling your pullets to finish off the roos. I almost get paid to eat my own roos. You will probably get a few people that show up because they must have a few of your roos to eat.......some will say they have allergies and are afraid to buy their meat with preservatives, some will be a cultural thing.....like Mexicans or Asians. Some will just have educated themselves and determined that they want to start eating fresh.
Well I still buy some meat in the stores, but not as much as I did before I got back into chickens. I also have rabbits. They produce fast and are cheap and really quiet. I have to remind myself to take care of them.

 

[patandchickens]

I believe the cheapest way is to stack species, ala Salatin.

This may be the cheapest per lb of meat to operate once you're running; but I do not believe it is even CLOSE to the cheapest to SET UP, or per normal family's meat needs. It requires you to have a considerable number of animals (to take advantage of rotation), and involves considerable upfront expenses in fencing, predator protection, etc etc.

Fine for doing it on a small-business scale, or perhaps if you eat a whole lot of meat and already happen to HAVE the facilities basically set up; but not a reasonable approach for a small family starting from open land, IMHO

Pat

 

[citylife]

I have a small meat rabbit project in my back yard with hanging cages. The meat is great, they do not require alot of care, and my chickens clean up under their cages and help with composting. They eat very little and take up very little room.

I eat rabbit at least once a week now. I love it!

the lady w/4 dogs, 4 city chickens, 5 meat rabbits, their kits and a lizard
oh and a STD poodle foster dog

 

[Beekissed]

I believe the cheapest way is to stack species, ala Salatin.

This may be the cheapest per lb of meat to operate once you're running; but I do not believe it is even CLOSE to the cheapest to SET UP, or per normal family's meat needs. It requires you to have a considerable number of animals (to take advantage of rotation), and involves considerable upfront expenses in fencing, predator protection, etc etc.

Fine for doing it on a small-business scale, or perhaps if you eat a whole lot of meat and already happen to HAVE the facilities basically set up; but not a reasonable approach for a small family starting from open land, IMHO

Pat

As my family has actually done this before and, believe me, there was no money to work with...and it provided a lot of meat for the family, I can tell you that it all depends on just HOW fancy you want to be with your setup.

But it definitely is more cheap than buying a beef every year and more realistic than thinking that a dude can go out and harvest a deer whenever the mood strikes. Many of men have hunted for years and not gotten meat...in some areas it actually takes skill and a pretty good wooded area to net some steady game.

A homestead depends largely on renewable food sources....small domestic livestock are easier to care for, find, pay for and transport than larger animals. They are easier to process at home. Pens and fences can be built as the money comes and as you scavenge for materials.

No, if you want a real show place and you are going to try to make some money to live on, it probably wouldn't suffice. But someone who is trying to provide meat for a family...as the OP has indicated...this is the optimal way to go. Been there, done that. You all do it as a hobby and to feel self-sufficient...I've actually lived on it~as a larger family, starting on open land, no income, no electricity, no running water, no fences, etc.

 

[ksalvagno]

One thing you may want to do is to buy goat meat, sheep meat, rabbit meat, etc and taste it. See if you even like it. It would be a shame to raise an animal only to find that you can't stand the taste. Keep in mind that the smaller animals will give you smaller cuts of meat. My DH has decided that he doesn't like goat because of the small amount of meat and especially stuff like chops that have more bone, he doesn't care for having to cut around the bones to get the small amount of meat. We both do like the taste though.

 

[ohiofarmgirl]

great thoughts, Bee. and i have to agree.

the key is to start where you are. use what you've got. and figure it out.

and there are lots of benefits to a stacked yard. our hens live in the same yard as the goat. mostly because thats what we had to work with - but we dont have a huge parasite problem b/c the chickens eat the bugs. and they are useful "worm detectors."

we've reused, recycled, and made do with that we've had. for example, our brooder has housed just about every animal on the property. i think i built it for $20 plus found materials. not a considerable upfront expense.

 

[patandchickens]

I think it depends hugely on where you live, Bee.

A lot of places, there is too much predator pressure (or too much incentive for animals to wander off and not return) to get away without significantly predatorproof fencing, and even if you scrounge things secondhand and all that, it just does *cost something* to put up a fence. For people in reasonably-wooded land, a physical fence may be free but in some places you just GOTTA have electric on it as well. (For people in areas where woodlots are a rarity and no good demolition/construction sites around as lumber sources, even just building a *physical* fence of any sort can involve a bit of spending)

While some places you certainly can't count on getting deer, other places you CAN (thinking of many places in PA and NY...). Ditto with fish, or other game.

Raising enough meat for two not-huge-meat-eaters is a whole different equation than raising enough meat for a very carnivorous large family.

And while BUYING beef costs money, BARTERING doesn't (well depending on how you do your mental bookkeeping, anyhow).

So what's cheapest (or even an option at all) is going to be different depending on a person's situation.

Pat

 

[Beekissed]

When you start with nothing, anything is something. I don't buy meat from the store. I've provided all my family's meat needs right here on this acre and have scrabbled around for fencing needs, used scrap lumber for this and that, recycled lots of things to make into something else.

Needless to say, deer are kind of scarce on my one little acre..but we try.

If it takes a lot of money to do this, I woke up in a parallel universe today~somewhere that I don't have one single, crappy income.

My folks were able to supplement our meat needs with deer harvest, but they could easily have done it just the way I do it now, if my father had wished to do so. We did have chickens, pigs, turkeys, ducks, a milk cow. We grew large gardens. If we had not been able to hunt, we could have had more small livestock just as easily. Dad didn't really want to be a farmer, so we didn't expand in that area.