Wish I Lived On a Farm

[snakelady]

Yes, covering the egg container will help a lot.

Just make sure they aren't too wet, so they rot. Kind of like reptile eggs. LOL!

[stangs13]

Allrighty, I was raised on a farm all of my life till now we moved to Texas and to a city so no farm. I am an FFA member now and have a heifer, I had a lamb and a pig. Pig is bacon now, and the lamb is a range magget! I dont like goats for anything exept as pets. You have to have quite a few for meat and milk. And for milk you have to keep the goats preggo as well as cows. And you can't just buy a cow or goat expecting it to produce milk, its got to be a certain breed. Chickens a great but smelly... LOL. They taste good. And you will need a whole herd of llamas for fleece. Horses are awesome aswell, but are the most finiky outof all the livestock. I like cattle andpigs. That is for sure something to get into. Good luck its alot of fun!

[Schlyne]

Well, I doubt you will have this problem, but my mother's horse ranch in the summer has had this problem. Sometimes it gets so hot and dry in the summer the squirrels try to drink from the horse trough. Unfortunately, they end up falling in and can't get out. So they drown in the tank and then it has to be drained, scrubbed out and refilled. I always wondered if we could have built a ladder or something so that they could have gotten out.

She has "fighting chickens" (OK, is one of the few places where cockfighting is legal) and they have on occasion managed to defend themselves from other predators.

We also had one pig for a while, which was a great deal of fun. He made great ham.

At one point my mom had cows, but they gave and sold the cows after they learned to jump the cattlegard.

[Ginevive]

It's a lot of cleaning! Unless you have alot of land and can let your animals live-out.. in that case, your pastures still require maintenance depending on how large they are and how much poop is being produced.
Cows are relatively messy and very destructive on land, though. And their manure is unlike "dry" goat/horse poop.. very splatty! But the goats and poultry shouldn't be that bad on your land.. though goats are huge escape artists!
Chickens are interesting. We have 2 roosters now but want to get some hens. Eggs will be everywhere! If you don't want eggs, though, beware that they'll sometimes sit around and rot and smell unless you collect them maybe daily, and give them away or sell them.
I will type mroe tomorrow.

[starmom]

Building a farm or ranch takes a dream and patience.
Find a piece of land that has year round water going through it and that you have water rights to.
Find your land in an area where the weather is conducive to what you want to raise and grow.
Finding your land is the biggest deal and comes way before thinking about the different types of chickens (btw, do you like the austrolorps Kara?)
If you and your huni can get through the land looking and purchasing intact, that is the entire battle.
Ooops, then there is all of the fencing and refencing and H-braces and refencing.
Building building building.
Do you like to get away sometimes.....not if you live on a farm. It is really hard to find a good ranch hand.
BUT---if this is your dream then follow it. Hubby and I have done it once and we're doing it again because we love it and because we believe in it.
Oh yeah, stock up on heirloom seeds (fix them in a container with nitrogen; they'll last a long time)
FOLLOW YOUR BLISS

[Ginevive]

Well it is tomorrow
Chickens do need space. Our two are actually free-range now, and thus they do not produce any odor or require cleanup. But there is the occasional pile of chicken poop that you have to step over. They spend most of their time outside, so it disperses. They roost in the barn in the rafters, and yes, their poop does build up under those spots. I just rake it up into the horse manure cart. But a lot of chickens = a lot of waste! I was at one farm where they roamed free; POOP was on EVERYthing in that barn! I would recommend a nice fenced in area that is predator-proof. "Chicken wire" is not really that good because some animals like weasels can fit into it. Wire grid fencing stuff with half-inch holes is good. Chix can fly too, so they'd need a fence that goes all around!
Horses require alot of cleaning if they live-in!! But many, many great keepers leave their horses outside 24-7. Even some members of the one forum I go on, that live up in Sescatchewan, leave them out. Mine stay out all of the time unless the weather is realllly bad, and in winter I bring them into their box stalls most nights, to prevent undue weight loss. They need hay, hay, and more hay, and more hay after that. Unless you have top-notch grazing.. that does need maintenance too.. but now is the best time to own horses for us. They eat "for free" out in the pasture! They do have a run-in shelter that they almost never use.. and horses Do need shade in the hot summertime.
Different horses "keep better" than others. Some need alot more feed than others to maintain weight. Teeth, age, and deworming all play into that.. geez, horses are more of a philosophy than a hobby!

[Jay_Bunny]

Thanks for all the information. We probably will not be getting land for a few more years mainly because of how expensive everything is. The cheapest plot of land we have found that sounded decent for its size was $47,000 for 10acres. Not to mention we know jack diddly squat about building anything and we'd have to build shelters for all the animals and set aside some space for a house. And most land available has no access to water or utilities like electric or anything of that nature.

[dsirkle]

I would recommend fainting goats. They are useful to play endless pranks on visiting city folk.

[Jay_Bunny]

I do not like fainting goats. The way I see it, in nature, a fainting goat would probably not last long. It would get scared and faint, leaving itself vunerable to predators. Therefor, the fainting is an undesirable trait.

When I keep goats I will keep one of these breeds: Nubian, LaMancha, or Nigerian Dwarf. Actually the dwarf goats are iffy for us as well because we've heard they can have difficulty with pregnancy and birth due to their size.

[snakelady]

I do not like fainting goats. The way I see it, in nature, a fainting goat would probably not last long. It would get scared and faint, leaving itself vunerable to predators. Therefor, the fainting is an undesirable trait.

When I keep goats I will keep one of these breeds: Nubian, LaMancha, or Nigerian Dwarf. Actually the dwarf goats are iffy for us as well because we've heard they can have difficulty with pregnancy and birth due to their size.

That trait probably was "man-made" but it could have come from nature too. Possums play dead for a reason.