Complete Chicken Nutrition, No Buying Feed - How?

[Beekissed]

Even for 1 cow that is overstocking if you want to feed no extra feed. Drought years can really show you how much your pasture is worth. I found out real quick with just 3-5 hair sheep on 1 acre of land...in a drought year, one acre will not sustain 3 sheep and 30 chickens without overusing the pasture during the hotter months...imagine a cow, sheep and chickens on 2.5 acres.

There is no way you are going to do that at all with milk cow and sheep on 2.5 acres, even without figuring in drought. I don't know that you have a concept of how much they actually consume, the seasonal grass growth and how much wear and tear on that pasture actually happens with free grazing and foot travel.

In the winter you will have to buy hay, as you don't have enough land to grow any and cure it on the stem for winter grazing, so buying feed for several ruminants on 5 acres of land is a foregone conclusion.

Designate paddocks and concentrate on building stationary paddocks first for sheep and chickens, in which you can rotate the pasture. If you think about fencing the whole 5 acres it will seem monumental, so first fence in one acre with good sheep fencing of woven wire topped with a hot wire. Put your chickens inside this paddock and only free range them within the confines of this one acre..until you get the next paddock built that adjoins that one. Then rotate sheep and chickens back and forth or even together between these two paddocks. Then just build onto the paddock idea until your whole acreage is fenced but also divided into paddocks....now you have a system in which you can rotate grazing, separate breeding animals, dedicate one plot to growing hay or crops only, etc.

In the winter you can still free range the chickens but you can confine the sheep to a sacrifice area near shelter and feed hay. They will conserve energy by not having to graze and search for graze, they won't overwork your pasture when it is at its weakest and lowest in nutrition, and they can store up manure for you in one spot to spread evenly on gardens or pasture later.

Here's a pic of sheep at a self feeding station in a winter sacrifice area...the hay was a bargain because it was last years second cutting, so I got it for $1 a bale. You can see the sheep are not suffering from nutrient loss from this last year's hay as they fattened up on fall fescue in the orchard before being penned for the winter:

 

[Britesea]

2 goats will give you better meat-and-milk ratio for the food they eat than a cow, plus with two of them, you can stagger their breedings so you have a more constant supply of milk. The only problems I ever had with goats was 1) it's difficult to get the cream to make butter and 2) you gotta be smarter than them! lol. Don't bother with keeping a buck on such a small piece of land unless you can't find any other bucks in the vicinity for breeding.

Don't forget you also need to count in the babies in those numbers. They will need pasture too, unless you plan on selling or butchering them before they start eating pasture. I would say your best numbers would be 2 goats (go for dual purpose, like Nubians) and 2 sheep. With any dairy animals, you will need to plan on at least some grain- just to keep them happy while you're milking them if nothing else.

You might also consider growing a couple of pigs each year on that extra milk. If you sell one off, it would help cover extra costs too.
We used to have a 30 x 90 garden space, split into 3 squares. One square had that year's garden, one square had a couple of pigs (really handy for tossing them the weeds when I was working!) and the third plot (which had had the pigs the previous year, and would hold the garden next year) was fallow- that was the one we dumped all the litter on. In the spring, we would till up the fallow garden plot, plant our seeds, and jump back so the plants didn't poke us in the eye! Seriously, after doing this for 20 years, our soil was incredible. At the time, we lived near San Jose, California; the ground there is adobe clay, with a hard pan about a foot down (not fun when you are trying to put up a fence!) but I have dug 4 feet down in our garden, and never hit hard pan, and the soil was dark and soft and full of worms. *sigh* That garden soil is the only thing I miss about our old place.

One last thing. A lot of people that are new to keeping dairy animals don't quite realize just how much of a change in their lives this will be. Forget about vacations- even if you have friends who say they would be happy to milk them for you while you are gone. Most of the time the friends will do that once, maybe twice... and then you find they are always busy. You will also have to care for the animals even if you are so sick you can barely move one foot in front of the other. Try it out, but don't feel guilty if you decide dairy animals are not for you- it takes a special kind of person to be willing to do that for decades.

 

[bubba1358]

2 goats will give you better meat-and-milk ratio for the food they eat than a cow, plus with two of them, you can stagger their breedings so you have a more constant supply of milk. The only problems I ever had with goats was 1) it's difficult to get the cream to make butter and 2) you gotta be smarter than them! lol. Don't bother with keeping a buck on such a small piece of land unless you can't find any other bucks in the vicinity for breeding.

Don't forget you also need to count in the babies in those numbers. They will need pasture too, unless you plan on selling or butchering them before they start eating pasture. I would say your best numbers would be 2 goats (go for dual purpose, like Nubians) and 2 sheep. With any dairy animals, you will need to plan on at least some grain- just to keep them happy while you're milking them if nothing else.

You might also consider growing a couple of pigs each year on that extra milk. If you sell one off, it would help cover extra costs too.
We used to have a 30 x 90 garden space, split into 3 squares. One square had that year's garden, one square had a couple of pigs (really handy for tossing them the weeds when I was working!) and the third plot (which had had the pigs the previous year, and would hold the garden next year) was fallow- that was the one we dumped all the litter on. In the spring, we would till up the fallow garden plot, plant our seeds, and jump back so the plants didn't poke us in the eye! Seriously, after doing this for 20 years, our soil was incredible. At the time, we lived near San Jose, California; the ground there is adobe clay, with a hard pan about a foot down (not fun when you are trying to put up a fence!) but I have dug 4 feet down in our garden, and never hit hard pan, and the soil was dark and soft and full of worms. *sigh* That garden soil is the only thing I miss about our old place.

One last thing. A lot of people that are new to keeping dairy animals don't quite realize just how much of a change in their lives this will be. Forget about vacations- even if you have friends who say they would be happy to milk them for you while you are gone. Most of the time the friends will do that once, maybe twice... and then you find they are always busy. You will also have to care for the animals even if you are so sick you can barely move one foot in front of the other. Try it out, but don't feel guilty if you decide dairy animals are not for you- it takes a special kind of person to be willing to do that for decades.

Thanks - all good advice. Goats are not an option for me though - my fencing isn't suitable, and the wife really hates them. :/

With the extra milk, I was thinking I could clabber it and give it to the dog and chickens, rather than pigs - thus solving at least a big part of my original question in providing a small flock of chickens with adequate protein for 10 months. And with a cow, I would only need to grow enough other stuff to feed them for two months - at their current eating rate, that's about 150 pounds of feed - easily doable with a small sunflower patch, meat rabbit innards (I'd have to time this out for "wabbit season"), plus expanding the forage area for that time.

Is there a better cow breed besides the Jersey that might make this more plausible? My calculations put the requirement at about 2-3 gallons a day for what I want to do - dairy products for a family of 5 that doesn't drink milk, with the by-products going to the dog and chickens.

Or am I really trying to do the square peg/round hole thing here?

 

[Beekissed]

Sort of...but there are many who are trying to farm on small acreage like that and all with good intentions for being self-sustaining, but it's not feasible to have it all~dairy cow, chickens, hogs, gardens, etc.~on just 5 acres or people would have been farming on much smaller land all these long years instead of on 50 acres +.

But...you can spend many years banging your head against that wall and you'll have netted some experiences you can then own, though won't be much closer to your original goal and be much, much poorer in the end.

You can have dairy sheep, which flock well and stay in fencing much better than goats~I can't stand those critters myself~you won't need big equipment to haul them to and from market like you would a cow, you have enough area to keep a breeding ram on the place, and sheep have very rich milk, have multiple offspring, can be handled by one person for dosing/vetting/health maintenance.

You'll need a lot more crop space to keep hay to sheep and grains to hogs than the area on which you have designated, so you might think about that as well. If you could use the whole 5 acres it could be better accomplished.

Folks have been farming since the Earth began and many are currently trying to do what you are doing on small properties but I don't know of any who have succeeded. No need to try and reinvent the wheel in one's short time here. Just start small and with just a few specie of livestock and see what your land will handle and what you are capable of doing, then add when you gain experience.

 

[SomeWhere]

I'll give this thread a bump since it's something we will be doing also though we do have more land overall, we will be starting out on a smaller scale and expanding from there.
In my research I've been formulating some ideas on the best approach to successful self sustainability. Please understand I am by no means an expert and have absolutely NO experience in these matters. I am only sharing thoughts and ideas on how we plan to approach similar tasks so you can sift thru what works for you. Ultimately, start small & build from there.

1. Keeping chickens-use a tractor system, this will keep the birds confined and is easily moveable to give them fresh pasture probably on a daily basis. A simple hoop house is lightweight and easily moveable and depending on how big, it may contain all of your birds. It's also possible to keep your sheep in another separate hoop house too and move it daily (or more often) although sheep tend to be easier to manage and confine.

2. Before adding any livestock, start with your grazing pastures. Having good grazing already established will help considerably. Clean up, rake, till and plant with a good seed mix of nutritious plants. May contain several grasses, clovers, legumes, even grains such as wheat and oats that are never allowed to go to seed. The grain grasses have a lot of nutrition when young and tender. Make use of the garden & orchard areas by letting the sheep (and future animals) in there to graze though you may need to provide protection of young trees from being devoured while you are tending and prepping the pastures. Try fencing/roping off at 1/2 acre intervals and prep each well in advance of letting the animals on it so each has time to grow before being grazed. Hopefully in the spring you'll get enough growth that you'll be able to mow it for next winters hay supply, let it rest & grow a bit before putting any animals on each section. Time out your planting/ growing/mowing/growing/grazing system so there will availability on a continual basis using the tractor system for all livestock. Once your system is better established then you can expand the grazing areas allowed.
3. Consider the animals you currently have and the animals you want. What are their purpose in your plans? Do you really need the donkey, sheep, milk cow? If you don't drink milk, is the milk cow really essential? If you're only getting the milk cow to feed other animals, it won't be cost effective. What about your meat consumption? Do you eat beef and want to raise a few? Are the sheep for mutton & spring lamb? If you are bent on a milk-only cow, you may want to consider a mini breed that is much smaller and has less feed/space requirements than a full sized breed. http://www.motherearthnews.com/home...l-breed-milk-cows.aspx?PageId=1#axzz2m91kX0Ma If you also want a meat cow, you may be more interested in a multi-breed like a Dexter that is a smaller breed cow that gives both meat and milk. http://www.motherearthnews.com/home...-heritage-livestock-zeylaf.aspx#axzz2m91kX0Ma Whatever breed you choose, the heifer(s) will need to be bred in order to provide milk and given your space limitations I wouldn't suggest trying to keep your own bull especially without proper sturdy fencing. Either set up plans with a neighbor that has a similar breed bull or check with a local veterinarian for artificial insemination. Then you'll have to consider the needs of the calf & what you plan on doing with it once born.

4. Fencing-The larger and more numerous of animals, the stronger fencing needed. I would think tethering animals as only a temporary situation until you can provide solid permanent fencing atleast on the most outter perimeter areas of your available pastures while using the movable netting as the cross fencing to enclose them in smaller grazing areas. Is there anyway to make use of all your land, even the rocky areas? Check out your local craigslist or other freebie sites to see if there is any 'used' lumber available for cheap or free. Sometimes people are wanting to get rid of an old barn or whatever and are willing to let you take the lumber. It saves them money on clean-up.

5. Is your hay field dedicated as such? After the last mowing of the year, can you let the animals on it to graze?

6. House garden-include grains for seed for future planting and used only as treats for animals. Are you planning on growing enough grains for your consumption also? For flour, cornmeal, breakfast oats, barley soup? Once those grain seeds have been harvested, the dry stalks can be used for litter in the animal bedding. Make use of all weeds and spent plants by feeding with the exception of raw potatoes. Do not feed raw potatoes, cooked are fine. I think it has something to do with digestion.
You can also plant field or dent corn to supplement feed, just don't plant with sweet corn or time the plantings so they mature at different times so they don't cross pollinate if you are going to save the seed from each for future plantings. You can feed stalks and all. Plant plenty of extras (more than your family needs) and use those extras as feed supplements. Here is a link for what your family might need for a year http://www.wellfedhomestead.com/how...-your-garden-to-provide-a-years-worth-of-food to give you an idea.

All of these suggestions are only that, suggestions and it may still not keep you from buying feed, but should help cut your costs considerably. Think of what you have, what you want and what you need and how it fits in your plans. Best of luck to you!

 

[Beekissed]

 

[baymule]

Somewhere, you are getting some good ideas. Keep doing your research until you can get your hands dirty. When are ya'll moving?

 

[SomeWhere]

We are looking at March-ish, that way the worst of winter is over and we'll have some time to settle in and before prepping the garden and pastures for planting. We're planning on starting with 1 acre in the spring and will hopefully have a couple more ready by next fall. By next summer we'll have a few chickens and maybe a few turkeys (our own T-day dinner) and a couple of Dexter cows by spring 2015. Atleast that is the plan.

 

[BethanyS]

anyone have a mini farming update?

 

[Tuco]

Here is an example of someone who raises chickens without buying/growing grain.