Feeding livestock - SHTF situations, stockpiling feed, etc.

[frustratedearthmother]

I like NH's answer! I have the space to stockpile some feed, but would only probably worry about the dogs. That reminds me I need a couple more metal trash cans.

Depending on what time of year it happened would determine how hard it would be to feed my critters. My pasture doesn't have too many trees/browse. There's some browse around a smaller pond in the back, but this time of year it's pretty eaten down. However, right across the street from me is a large pasture...probably a hundred acres or so...that hasn't had any livestock on it for 5 or 6 years now. There are a lot of bushes and small trees that still have green stuff year round. And, it's way overgrown - full of perfect goat goodies. I guess if it were a terrible emergency I'd put a little gate in that fence and take the goats over there in the mornings and bring them home in the evenings. They could browse that area for years and never clean it all out. The dogs would definitely need to go with them because we hear all manner of coyotes over there and I'm fairly sure that the bobcat population would make good use of that cover to do some goat hunting.

Chickens would be on their own and if they couldn't make it - they'd be dog food.

Pigs...eh...they'd make do in that big pasture too if needed - likely we'd do a pretty serious reduction of pork on the hoof in that case.

Little horses - they'd be ok in their regular pasture. I have enough pasture grass for them year round. They don't get any grain now (or ever except as an enticement to be caught) and they're ridiculously rotund!

Quail would be an issue. They need a prepared formula that's pretty high in protein to lay well...free ranging them would be kinda hard, lol.

The dogs would be the biggest issue I guess if I didn't have a stockpile for them. We would eventually run out of chickens and even quail to feed them...

 

[NH Homesteader]

DH thinks the chickens could survive without grain like the turkeys . So, I guess keeping hardy heritage animals is part of my plan!

 

[baymule]

One of our neighbors has a key to the house and a key to the tractor-he can use the tractor as his own. He has helped us beyond what we can repay him, and we help him too. There are some good people in our little neighborhood and we watch out for each other. There was a truck parked on the side of the road in front of 15 acres next to us. The people that own it don't live there. Us and another neighbor went roaring up on our Kawasaki mules, loaded for bear. It turned out to be the man that owned it and he was annoyed that we showed up, but we set him straight in a hurry. We let him know that we watched his place just like we watched our own and he decided that was a good thing.

 

[CrealCritter]

One of our neighbors has a key to the house and a key to the tractor-he can use the tractor as his own. He has helped us beyond what we can repay him, and we help him too. There are some good people in our little neighborhood and we watch out for each other. There was a truck parked on the side of the road in front of 15 acres next to us. The people that own it don't live there. Us and another neighbor went roaring up on our Kawasaki mules, loaded for bear. It turned out to be the man that owned it and he was annoyed that we showed up, but we set him straight in a hurry. We let him know that we watched his place just like we watched our own and he decided that was a good thing.

Yep exactly! It's built on trust and villegance - I think the root word for villegance is village

That's exactly what it is a village built on trust

Another true story
I woke on morning last year to discover my truck gone. I leave my keys in the ignition and the doors unlocked while it's parked in the drive at home. I have a 24x7x365 outside guard dog that I believe no one would want to tangle with.

I thought about calling the police to report it stolen - but I thought about it a little more over my first cup of coffee. A little while later my truck (the veggie hauler) pulls up in the drive with my neighbor behind the wheel. He got out and said to me, "I needed to borrow your truck to run into town and I didn't want to wake you. I put some gas in there too" I said cool, you already know you can use it anytime. He said yep I know that.

 

[tortoise]

I gotta say, the best protection is enough land to sustain your animals. I would not worry about my sheep except in the case of a fire that destroy pasture and barn. In that case... might be time to roundup the neighbors, find everyone with a smoker and get to work. IDK, that would be tough.

 

[Britesea]

hate to say it, but in a truly severe shtf situation, horses might not be stolen for riding, but for food. After all, that's what they were originally domesticated for... riding and carrying burdens came along as an afterthought. Dogs and cats might become someone's dinner as well in a long term disaster.

In Europe and Britain, villages were built around a village green, which served as pasture for small livestock, being convenient and easy to watch over.

 

[Beekissed]

We'd be okay here, depending upon the length of time of said disaster and type of disaster. The cats can hunt and, if I give the dogs a free range opportunity, they are able hunters as well and can also eat our food scraps, as dogs used to do. Thing is, how many food scraps would we conceivably have in our small household that could sustain two large dogs, so the hunting would be a must.

The chickens have chicken heaven worth of food out there and would adapt well to forage only living, as most of the year they are doing that anyway. If the disaster happened in the winter months, I'm usually stocked up on enough feed for them to last a few months anyway. Same with the cats and dogs.

I usually keep a couple months worth of feed on hand for the chickens all year round, so depending on the length of the crisis, we're good here.

We're very blessed to live where we do, surrounded by thousands of acres of woodland, few neighbors close by and 20 mi. from the nearest town of any size. Blessed too, to have few large livestock on hand of which to worry...even when I did, I didn't depend on grain based feed for them, feeding grass and hay only all year round and folks who do this stockpile enough hay to feed through a typical natural disaster.

I think a more dire problem would be water access when the electric grid is down. Very few people have systems in place for watering stock when this occurs unless they live near a body of water. We stockpile water here for our own use in that eventuality but would depend on rain catchment for watering the animals during those times...or water with our dish and wash water like they used to do.

I'd like to have a hand pump installed on our well head for these kind of things and that's on our list here of "things to do". One can't always depend on it to rain nowadays.

 

[Hinotori]

Here my requirements were

1. Not in an HOA
2. Not in Lahar flow
3. Over 5 acres so I could have the animals I wanted.

Yes we have wetlands, but plenty of acreage for the area. Those wetlands keep developers and housing density out. They also attract tins of wildlife. We're zoned Rural Sensitive Resource 10.

 

[Hinotori]

Pasture and wild seeds for chickens. We have acres of canary grass here that produces lots of seed. Bunch of other wild seed bearing plants as well. Plus hawthorn berries through autumn and winter. I'd have to collect and store those. The wild birds eat them all by spring. A blueberry collector on a pole works for them. I've done that.

The ameraucana would do just fine free ranging. The silkies are actually better foragers, though, but they can't see danger coming.

The dogs and cats already eat rodents and birds. The GSD reduced the amount of starlings we get by a great deal. Goose would be on the menu. We get tons of them with the ponds. I also have no problem cooking coyote up for the dogs. All I'd need to do is sit outside for a bit at night to shoot one. Like right now they are out there yipping.

Biggest issue is that we are too close to large cities.

 

[Chic Rustler]

I'd let the chickens free range. I'd put the rabbits in tractors. Id feed dogs what ever we didn't eat. Idk how long that would last but I'm not to the point where I can afford to stock pile feed