Let's talk about meat, dairy, eggs, hunting, and cooking on the homestead

[BarredBuff]

I have never been able to raise all of my own meat or dairy. I simply don't have the acreage to do so. However, through the years we have bought beef, and pork from local folks. I have raised numerous broilers and rabbits. We have hunted some years. I have always kept chickens for eggs. I attempted to raise dairy goats and cattle early on, but I didn't have the space to do it right.

With that being said, due to all of the unrest and disease we have experienced lately, I have been curious what you all would consider essential to being completely self-reliant with meat, eggs, and dairy. What animals would you raise? How many? How would you feed them? If you're a hunter, what would you hunt in your area? How would you preserve your meat, eggs and dairy? What if you were off the grid? What meals would you create if you were able to do this?

Let's take some time and discuss this out!

 

[BarredBuff]

I am a beef farmer now! I have those over at the family farm, and raising 10 steers. 1 lucky boy will end up in my freezer and in my pantry. Jars and jars and jars of stew meat, roast, and ground beef.

 

[Hinotori]

Humans really do best in small groups to trade around for what they need. Total self sufficiency is actully unnatural for us.

I have my ameraucana and easter egger chickens which actually do pretty well foraging here even if they aren't the best at it. It's just good meadowland beside marsh and pond. Lots of plant variety and small mammals and insects for protein. The silkies do not survive foraging as they are too predator vulnerable and won't come out of the rain that soaks through silkied feathers.

I actually need a few goats or sheep of the more browsing types. I could support them year round with just pasture. Grass grows here slowly even in winter. The blackberries don't even drop their leaves for winter. I like goat milk and meat.

We get a lot of blacktail deer and Roosevelt elk here. The water really draws them in come summer and early autumn. Just have to sit outside and wait for dusk to get one. There are also beaver, geese, and many different duck species.

We have access to water even if it would need boiled. Rainwater is plentiful and easy to collect most of the year here. I'm not sure if getting a hand pump for the well is worth the effort as it's over a 100 feet deep.

We have a nice wood stove for heat. I've also cooked on it when needed.

The year we lost power for 5 days in winter proved that we could do fine. I constantly had snow and ice melting for animals and washing. I had one of those camping showers that I'd fill with warm water then we'd take it into the tub. We didn't flush the toilet as much because I had to melt the water for that, too. It's a very old septic so is gravity fed. No issues like with the new ones that require electricity to run pumps.

Now loosing power sucks if you have an electric freezer. Generator only gives you so much time and it's best to get canning or drying if power isn't coming back.

 

[Britesea]

I've been working on security for a while here. First, I don't want to look like an obvious fortress, because that signals that there might be something worth stealing. I learned that from a woman I used to clean house for; she and her husband either owned or managed almost every branch of a certain fast food chain in Santa Clara County-- we are talking very, very wealthy. But her house just looked like a normal suburban house in any neighborhood. It wasn't huge, it didn't scream LOOK AT ME!!! But once you entered the house, it was immediately obvious they were rich (that was where I first saw a piece of genuine Capodimonte porcelain).
Anyway, we have a sturdy chain link fence, with locked gates. I am working on planting thorny bushes all along the fence- things like roses, gooseberries, and hawthorns. Our LGD patrols the area regularly. All of this is designed to slow invaders down long enough for us to grab our guns etc. The front door is steel, with anti-kick hardware. Soon the backdoor will be the same. Next on our list will be double paned windows with security film, since windows are one of the most vulnerable parts of your property. If I ever have the money to do it, I would also like to re-side our house with something that is flame resistant also (we already have a metal roof).

We are also working on getting to know our neighbors better. It's difficult because most of them we rarely see. Walking to the post office regularly is helping, and I've been offering free eggs occasionally when we can talk to someone. Amazing what a little gift can do to make people friendlier! I figure it will also make them more tolerant of our roosters, lol.

 

[BarredBuff]

I am going to do two takes at that at my own question. First, I am going to share what I would ideally do and then I am going to share what I would do if I had to do it tomorrow.

If, land, time, and resources were not an issue, I think this would be how I would go about it. I would want to be in a more secluded location with naturally occurring water sources, and plenty of pasture and terrain suitable for hunting and growing livestock.

Poultry & Eggs: I think I could easily raise a mixed flock of chickens and turkeys and be fairly self reliant. I think a mix of White Rocks, Rhode Island Reds, and Buff Orpington would easily provide all of your eggs and some meat to add to the pantry. Ideally, I would want a White Rock and Buff Orpington rooster to be the breeders. White Rocks and Buff Orpington add quite a bit of size to a flock. Buff Orpingtons are also reliable brooders and mothers. 25 hens and 2 roosters with 6 turkey hens and 2 toms would be sufficient in the poultry category. I have always wanted to raise Narragansett turkeys. I think between roosters, turkeys, and old laying hens you could can quite a bit of poultry from this flock. I would house them together in a fenced acre lot for the best protection from varmints and to keep them out of the yard. If you had a small pond, you could also easily raise geese for meat as well. If you had a small grassy area with your orchard and a small pond, two trios of geese would easily raise extra meat for the table. I would not house them with my chickens and turkeys though.

Dairy: I would prefer to raise a cow. The butter is the biggest draw for me compared to a goat. That's a great fat to use in cooking and I love butter. Cows also give a higher quantity of milk and you could make plenty of butter, buttermilk, sour cream, yogurt, ice cream, and cheese. Extra and old milk could be clabbered and fed to the chickens and hogs. You also would have an abundance to sell or trade too which could be an advantage. They also are not the escape artists that goats tend to be either. The calf could be sold or fed out to be a beef as well. I would be comfortable raising any of the main dairy breeds except Holsteins. They can temperamental and they do not have as high butterfat or protein content.

Beef & Pork: I do not think I would raise a beef every year or at all. I think I could make up with deer. I would want to kill 2 or 3 hogs a year. You could cure the hams, and bacon. I would can the sausage, and if possible freeze the chops. You'd have a great source of cooking fat with the lard you could render. If you could raise them in a wooded area with plenty of suitable foraging sites, you could minimize the grain needs. You could feed garden waste, and old milk as well. Hogs would definitely be the biggest consumer of feed. If you raised a few sows, you could sell the feeder pigs early and keep a few to kill later. That could help with feed costs. I think hogs would be essential for meat self reliance because you can preserve the meat a variety of ways and you can get plenty of lard.

Hunting & Fishing: If I could kill three or four deer in the fall, I would never want or need to raise a beef. That would be ideal. If you had reliably cold temperatures, you could keep the carcass store in a cold barn and cut what you needed from it. I would be more inclined to can the majority of it as ground meat and chunks. I think another overlooked piece to the puzzle is to take advantage of small game seasons. Kill your limit on squirrels, rabbits, turkeys, grouse, etc. to supplement the table. You probably won't preserve any, but it would be fresh meat in it's season which would be an advantage too. The same can be said with fishing as well. Catch and supplement as you go. If you can do it, freeze and can some fish as you go for later.

Feeding: I think you would have to develop productive pasture spaces for all of your livestock. Lush grass and legumes for the cattle during the spring, summer and fall. Grass and clover for the geese. Create an ideal environment for weeds, bugs, and worms to feed your chickens and turkeys. Be sure to provide any garden waste, milk, slaughter scraps, table scraps to the hogs and chickens. I think for your dairy cattle, you'd have to grow and cut alfalfa hay to keep the protein available in the winter. Raise or buy some grain to keep your cattle, sow, and chickens through the winter months. I am not an expert at all, but I think you always need to look for ways to interconnect your projects. Waste nothing.

Cooking: Ideally, I would have a gas cook stove in the main kitchen and a wooden range for the winter months. A good fire pit and a grill would also be handy in the summer to utilize for preparing meals and to assist in keeping the house cooler and conserving fuel.

Preservation: I would depend primarily on canning and curing. I would can all of the poultry, fish and venison. I would smoke, and cure the majority of the pork. We could go back to the old days and build a smokehouse. If freezing was an option, I would freeze the best steaks, chops, roasts, and a few whole birds and fish to eat. If refrigeration was not available, you would have to build a spring house or similar structure to keep milk, and butter chilled. Luckily, eggs will keep for a little while unwashed in a cool, dark area.

I agree with @baymule it would be imperative to build a strong community of friends and family if this was a serious situation. A network of trading and bartering would go a long way.

Ultimately, no one can build a closed system of true self sufficiency. It is actually impossible. In this scenario, I have assumed that I already possess all of the infrastructure, tools, etc to begin with. I am also operating with the assumption that I could attain salt, canning lids//jars, and grain with little trouble.

When I get back from church, I will share what I would have to do right now if I was pressed to do so...

 

[Chic Rustler]

I have 3 acres. I only use about 1 acre for homesteading. we raise rabbits and chickens. you would be surprised how much you can get from a trio of rabbits. especially if you don't live in hell...or Texas heat. they love extra greens from the garden

we hunt for our red meat. 4 deer will usually feed the 6 of us for the year. we only buy pork at the store

 

[Mini Horses]

We would ALL become more dependent on veggies. Puts a whole new meaning on your garden -- need, not want.

Community interaction/sharing/bartering would be more than beneficial. Yes, raising own animal feeds & NO waste, paramount. If no gas, propane, etc. -- manual & animal labor. Where one has grass and no animals -- feed livestock & share their production. By the way, goat is red meat & delish -- and I have goat butter in the frig. LOL My chickens & cats love the milk, chickens esp like clabber.

Back to the old ways -- I watched & participated for years as my grandparents worked a garden, canned, hunted, raised animals, plowed by horse, did laundry on a washboard, a rope & bucket well, wood heat & cooking, no electric and, of course an outhouse! LOL. I'm 74 and actually have lived off grid...….my uncle, a young teen then, thought his push mower was Great! Much faster than his cythe. Grandma made her own lye for soaps. There were haystacks & corn cribs. And always something to do.




Is this a "farm game" ????????? LOL

 

[Rammy]

Here are my candidates for freezer camp.

 

[baymule]

We have 8 acres. We have a lot of trees, my husband fights over cutting every single one. I have managed to talk him into clearing a lot of our 8 acres, including hiring a forestry mulcher that saved us probably several years of machete hacking.

Horses. We have 4 horses. Yeah, non productive and 2 of them are ancient, 31 and 32 years old, unridable due to illness. If the bottom fell out of this country, 2 hard decisions would have to be made on my beloved old friends.

Sheep. We have hair sheep. A small livestock animal that produces usually twins, can be raised on grass and forage and is fairly easy to care for. The only snag in that goes back to my lack of grass. I'm working hard to not just improve pasture, but to plant pasture, coax it to come up and survive. It's an uphill battle. I would have to reduce my small flock if I couldn't buy feed and hay. Sheep could be sustainable, but it would be work to keep them fed through the winter and the heat of the summer.

Chickens. I currently have 7 Easter Egger hens. I sold half my flock due to us not needing as many eggs because our daughter and family moved away. After all the discussion here, I have plans on ordering White Rock chicks in the spring, which will make a better farm chicken than what I have now. I slaughter old layer hens and can the meat. We prefer young layer roosters to the CCX.

We raise feeder pigs. That would be unsustainable due to the amounts of purchased feed. The ultimate small homestead pig would more than likely be American Guinea Hog or Kune Kune hogs. While they would probably still need feed, their size would work in my favor for not needing as much.

We raise CCX every year, again, this would be unsustainable due to the enormous amounts of feed they consume. We don't eat much of it anyway, we mainly raise them to sell and to give to our DD and family. Selling the CCX meat is also for the IRS in that we are a farm and have a product to sell, likewise with the feeder pigs. We show a profit on both the CCX and the pigs.

Milk-I am just not that dedicated. However a neighbor has cattle and to populate his herd, he bought a few dairy bottle calves, raising them to add to his herd. In a pinch, we could probably work something out on milking one of them, but that sure would be a wild cow rodeo! A milk cow would be a benefit for the community as one person would have a hard time consuming all that milk.

Hunting. There are thousands of acres around us, all private property. Feral hogs run rampant everywhere. I doubt that we would join in any survival hunting-people are crazy.

Cooking. On grid, our house is all electric and cooking is easy. Off grid would be over a BBQ pit, not near as much fun! I have long been interested in an outdoor earth oven. Again, not near as easy, but would be a benefit not only to us, but to the community in that food could be cooked in ways that a BBQ pit of open fire would fall short.

Preserving meat. With no electricity, meat would have to be canned, dehydrated, smoked or everybody eat it up before it spoils. Hog slaughter would move to the fall, a smokehouse would have to be built, but the heat here would make keeping any meat a special challenge, winter or no winter.

Heating and cooling our home. We live in a double wide, all electric. We are screwed. LOL LOL

In any situation, much thought would have to be given to community. Helping our neighbors and working together using our diverse talents would be paramount to survival. United we stand, divided we fall.

 

[frustratedearthmother]

I haven't responded to this thread yet - but I've been thinking about it for awhile. So here goes...

We have 2.5 acres here and the use of the neighbors area which is about 4 more acres. That's still not enough for the load I have on it. Hay and supplemental feed is a necessity. The first step here would be to streamline. I'm actually in that process now - just because it needs to be done.

I'm also in the midst of a breed change in the goats. I've been trying to initiate a more hardy goat. I started with a cross of Pygmy and Nubian resulting in Kinders. Kinders are more utilitarian than either of the parent breeds. Kinders are hardier than Nubians, which have no parasite resistance what-so-ever! After that - enter the Kiko breed, well-known for parasite resistance. Crossing the Kiko and Kinders I'm seeing a much hardier animal finally. I'm in the process of phasing out the Nubians. Don't need them anymore. The Kinders which are smaller and hardier supply almost as much milk as the Nubians. Kinder/Kiko crosses are very hardy. They make good meat and milk goats also.

Feed: if we couldn't access commercial feed I would have to concentrate on a goat that could not only exist, but thrive, on less. There's about 80 acres of un-utilized land right across the street from me. It's totally grown up to the extent that even walking through there would be a massive challenge. Looks like free goat food to me. They could be turned out on it during the day and brought back in at night. It comes with challenges in the form of predators. We routinely hear coyotes singing over there. Enter Cowboy and Missy!

Pigs - definitely scale down to a half-dozen or less. I'm at 11 right now with plans to butcher at least three of them this fall and next spring. Need to sell a couple more and I'll be where I want to be. The AGH can take care of itself and does well on graze. With less critters the pasture graze would support them almost year round.

Chickens: I've got a mixed flock and am happy with 'em. I have orpingtons, ameracaunas, mixes of both and a bit of Faverolle thrown in for fun. The birds I'm happiest with right now are the Naked Necks. The roosters are fiercely protective of their hens, but are no problem with people. They're a good sized bird and make a decent carcass. I've had a couple of them go broody and they are great moms and decent layers as well. They free-range with the best of 'em. In fact, they positioned themselves in the pasture instead of the barnyard so they can roam more. I've seen them waaaay out in the pasture with the goats.

Each animal helps support the others. Pigs and even chickens can utilize milk products. Pigs love eggs and can thrive on just about anything they can get their mouths around.

Almost forgot the quail. Without electricity and an incubator reproduction would be difficult to say the least. I suppose I could utilize a broody hen, but my big hens would likely crush those tiny eggs. I need some silkies!! Anybody have any silkie eggs for sale?

Gardens - have to plant as much as possible and preserve it any way that works. With no electricity canning and dehydrating would be a necessity. Extra for the animals in the form of corn, root veggies and winter squash/pumpkins.

We are all electric with no wood stove. Again - the 80 acres across the street would offer firewood. Not great stuff, but it would do for what we'd need it for. I guess we could use the extra barbecue pits to cook on with wood if that's all we could come up with. We have a camp stove and I have about 72K small propane cannisters, lol. I might exaggerate a little. But, if we were forced to cook with no propane or electricity we'd be hurting. I've always wanted to build a small solar oven. I think it's a project I'll try when the grands are here. Seems like a good learning experience and fun too.

With no AC we'd suffer immensely in the summer, but we'd survive winters just fine even without supplemental heat. We might get cold a couple of times, but for the most part our winters are so mild we rarely run the furnace anyway.

Water - we are on a well. My generators will pull the well, but you've gotta have fuel. I can store some fuel but it sure won't last forever. I'd love to have a solar pump on the well. I really need to explore options like the Simple Pump. We also have two ponds on the neighbors property we could use for water. Having the means to purify is a necessity. One of the ponds is stocked with fish - but they're not MY fish. I feel sure our neighbors would be amenable to sharing. Meat/milk/eggs for fish sounds good to me.

Haven't totally thought out other issues...like hygiene and dealing with illness. We can store some cleaning products and some meds, but...DH would be in big trouble, and wouldn't last long without his diabetic meds.

That thought brings up the need to do whatever we can to keep ourselves healthy and strong. Should be easier than it is, lol.