Keeping animals

matt

matt

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Who here keeps animals (chickens, goats, rabbit - sorry Dave, cattle, etc.)?

We don't have much space, but would like to start keeping animals this spring. I'm thinking ~20 chickens and possibly some meat goats or sheep. I've got about an extra acre, but it's sort of spread out (the center of our land is dominated by the house and septic).

It'll be a substantial investment as we have no barn to start with (and the animals housing needs to be "presentable" or my wife won't go for it, e.g. no old truck caps, etc.).

Any tips or suggestions? Chickens seem the obvious place to start.

Are you able to produce a substantial fraction of your food? And at what level of savings, if any?

Thanks,
Matt
 
Stupid questions:

1) Will the chickens "tend themselves" for any length of time? e.g. if we go away for a long weekend, will they be ok with a pile of food and water? a week?

We do like to travel in the summer...

2) Can you recommend a breed that would be good with kids (layers and broilers)? (not aggressive)
 
We are going with Rhode Island Reds. They lay big eggs and they sometimes have double youks. YUMM!!!! That was recommended to me from a few friends who did chickens in there younger days. I am building my coup right now. I am building for 8-10 chickens. We are a family of 3 so that is more than plenty. Left over eggs go to friends wh said they will help pitch in for feed. SO I guesss we have the community thing going.

Next year if the chicks work out Turkeys will be the next thing to do.


Good luck and backyardchickens.com is a great place. DOn
 
Did you design the chicken coop yourself ?

If you have plans for it would you mind PMing or E Mailing them to me ?

Need a good safe coop design.

thanks


THEFAN said:
We are going with Rhode Island Reds. They lay big eggs and they sometimes have double yolks. YUMM!!!! That was recommended to me from a few friends who did chickens in there younger days. I am building my coup right now. I am building for 8-10 chickens. We are a family of 3 so that is more than plenty. Left over eggs go to friends wh said they will help pitch in for feed. SO I guess we have the community thing going.

Next year if the chicks work out Turkeys will be the next thing to do.


Good luck and backyardchickens.com is a great place. DOn
Click to expand...
 
SemiAutoSam said:
Did you design the chicken coop yourself ?

If you have plans for it would you mind PMing or E Mailing them to me ?

Need a good safe coop design.

thanks
Click to expand...


Man my spelling is bad when I type fater than I think. :)

I am doing my own. I bought a nice plan book off evil bay. Book is chicken coops by Pangman. Has a lot coops from a few chicks to thousands.

I'll be building the coop near my garage so I can get power out to the coop for the winter months. It will be set up between the garage and garden so I can put gutters on the coop to gather more water for my garden aswell. Thhis way I can get the water off my garage and coop in to my raised water holding buckets and claw tubs. Just my ideas and plans. Thanks Don
http://www.backyardchickens.com/coops/monica.html

My local lumberyard had a great deal on some 2x6x7 for 2.00 each so I bought 50 fo them to get started. I'm sure I will use the rest on my rootceller.
 
I plan to hopefully raise chickens and rabbits come this spring. I'm going to have a local farmer given me some pointers one of these days when it gets a bit closer to a point where I can build coops.
 
We raised chicken s and pigs a few years back and this year we are going to be raising them again, and also maybe a couple of goats and sheep.
Chickens are easy to raise. As far as going away, I would still have someone come and check to make sure they have water. You can get large feeders so that would work. Even when we would go away for a weekend we would have my nieces come over and make sure they had food and water.
Hubby has to build us a new coop this year. I am planning mostly meat birds and maybe 10 layers for eggs.
 
Anyone in the Boston metrowest are interested in sharing some responsibility for meat birds? I desperately want to raise some chickens this summer but don't have the room in my backyard. I'm willing to buy chickens, feed, build the coop, and slaughter. Just need to find a location and someone willing to tend them and contribute money to the coop.
 
We've got a fixed coop, but a mobile coop (sometimes called a tractor) might work better to take advantage of the space. Plans can be found on the Internet. If you go mobile then electric netting is a good fencing option. Premier1 is the place to go for electric fencing.

The core of our flock are Barred Rocks. They are good docile dual-use birds. They lay well for 2-3 years, then still have some decent size when they go to the freezer. We've found that Rodie's lay better, but are a little more high-strung and don't have quite the meat as the Rocks.

We found the Storey's Guides to be quite helpful. The one for chickens has a lot of good info and include plans for coops and other gear.
 
NavyRedneck said:
Anyone in the Boston metrowest are interested in sharing some responsibility for meat birds? I desperately want to raise some chickens this summer but don't have the room in my backyard. I'm willing to buy chickens, feed, build the coop, and slaughter. Just need to find a location and someone willing to tend them and contribute money to the coop.
Click to expand...

I won't have room to raise extra, but I was wondering the same thing about ordering a bunch to save a bit.

Loads of coop designs here: http://www.backyardchickens.com/coopdesigns.html
Most are more ornamental than most of us would want, but hey... to each his own.

For you folks that have kept chickens before, when do like to get them delivered?
 
I am getting mine this spring, once the snow is gone. Mainly because I have indoor cats, so there is no way I can keep them in the house. They'll be in the coop with a light.
 
We have 4 hens and a roo. I currently keep them in a fixed coop but the plan is to build a tractor in the spring. They are easy. We have left ours for up to a week. BUy the largest waterer and feeder you can if you travel. We are getting 2 to 3 eggs a day from them. This is more than enough for us. They are RI Whites and one Red. We have got a couple of double yokers. I am going to try to hatch some this spring as an experiment and see if I can raise some meat chickens from them. Make sure you are zoned for animals. We arent but said screw it and the neighbors get the extra eggs. If you can I would get pullets instead of chicks. They are further along and have gotten through most of the dying stages and will lay sooner. I think I paid 4 or 5 bucks each for ours. Chicks were only 1.50 at the feed store.
 
I will hopefully be setting up the coop & getting some chickens this spring. I love the info at backyardchickens.com. For a chicken newb, it's a valuable resource.
 
Well, I managed to locate (2) good size wooden crates that will suffice as "starter coops" and (2) windows on the side of the road to go into the real coop for when it gets built! We're off to a good start!

Any thoughts on how much space is needed for goats? And the efficacy of electric fencing for keeping them in? I've found some electric mesh fence that seems specifcaly made for them.

Matt
 
matt said:
Well, I managed to locate (2) good size wooden crates that will suffice as "starter coops" and (2) windows on the side of the road to go into the real coop for when it gets built! We're off to a good start!

Any thoughts on how much space is needed for goats? And the efficacy of electric fencing for keeping them in? I've found some electric mesh fence that seems specifcaly made for them.

Matt
Click to expand...
We've used regular ElectroStop as temporary fencing for our goats for 6 years. It's worked pretty well. The one problem we've had is that young goats will occasionally attempt to run through it if they get spooked and they could then get entangled. It's not very likely to happen if they get "used to it" fairly early.

The one thing with netting is that you need to use 2 supplemental posts to strengthen the "gate" end, plus additional ones if your ground is at all uneven. We use 48" Powerposts.

We started out using an IntelliShock 20B battery charger. It's got plenty of power and a 165AH 9v dry battery lasts all season. I've since added a solar panel and gone to a rechargeable battery.

We use a Hotshot 150 where there is 110V. It more than powerful enough for 2 sections of netting. You'll also want a fence tester for troubleshooting, and an indicator or alarm so you can tell at a glance if the fence is live (just grabbing the net to check gets old real quick, and it's not nearly as accurate[wink]).

For our permanent fencing we are now using 16' galvanized cattle panels with U or T posts. They're easy to put up and much lower maintenance than the electric fencing. I've heard that some goats will climb the panels, but we've never had any problems. We've run an offset hot wire powered by the 110V energizer down both sides of the sections that separate the men from the ladies. It provides extra insurance from unintended liaisons during heat/rut season.

We use the temporary fencing and solar charger to confine our meat wethers out for brush clearing duty. I just run the mower down the intended fence line and that keeps it clear enough for 3-4 weeks.

Storey's has books for the different goat types (dairy v.s. meat) that has good info on accommodations, space, etc. Feel free to stop by some time to look at our set-up to get an idea of how much space we have for our goats.
 
Kevin, if you wouldn't mind, maybe I could drop by some time for an hour to talk about some of the in's and out's?

Chris said:
Be sure to check your town's by-laws. A lot of them are placing some serious restrictions on small time farming.
Click to expand...

already done, I'm GTG! (thanks Kevin)
 
Anyone near Townsend, MA that is interested in chicks the farm store in the center of town sells them. The first shipment is due March 22 with follow on shipments about every two weeks or so. They carry about 8-10 different kinds at $2.20 per chick. I have no business connection with them, I like the fact that I have one stop shopping for chicks, feed, etc.

I have 8 RI Reds coming in on the 22nd. I live on the edge of a swamp so I plan to let them free range in my backyard during the day and in a coop at night. Hopefully they will keep the bug population down and save me some $$$ in feed at the same time. Some eggs would be good too.....can't get much more organic than eating bugs....
 
chaynes68 said:
Anyone near Townsend, MA that is interested in chicks the farm store in the center of town sells them. The first shipment is due March 22 with follow on shipments about every two weeks or so. They carry about 8-10 different kinds at $2.20 per chick. I have no business connection with them, I like the fact that I have one stop shopping for chicks, feed, etc.

I have 8 RI Reds coming in on the 22nd. I live on the edge of a swamp so I plan to let them free range in my backyard during the day and in a coop at night. Hopefully they will keep the bug population down and save me some $$$ in feed at the same time. Some eggs would be good too.....can't get much more organic than eating bugs....
Click to expand...
Chickens are OK for bug control. Much better though are Muscovy ducks. They're regular bug vacuums in part because they'll go into standing water and eat bug larvae. We've had ours for 18 months and the reduction in bugs last year was quite noticeable. Guineas are reportedly even better bug eaters but can be very noisy.
 
Talk about Livestock.

We just had a addition today.

The gray one is a little doe and the black one is a buck.

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Do you keep them for dairy? or just for kicks?
I'm leaning toward a smaller dairy goat given the size of the space we have. Nigerian Dwarf goat seems like a good choice.
 
Nigerian Dwarfs are about the same size as ours but then ours are a little bigger than the purebred African pygmy.

We dont milk them at present but should be doing that just about the time that the most recent doe stops nursing the two newborns.

We mainly got them as pets but depending on how the SHTF we would consider them food stores on the hoof.

The next thing I need to do Is build them a better house as the one I built for them some 8 years ago.

It blew over in a wind storm a month or so ago.

matt said:
Do you keep them for dairy? or just for kicks?
I'm leaning toward a smaller dairy goat given the size of the space we have. Nigerian Dwarf goat seems like a good choice.
Click to expand...
 

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