Stop! You Aren’t Ready for Homestead Animals • Homestead Lady

Stop! Before you impulse buy that adorable chick, before you take those “free” goats, before you invest in that beautiful cow, be honest with yourself about whether or not you’re truly ready to bring homestead animals onto your land. Use the following guidelines, tips, insights, and brainstorming exercises to accurately determine if you have the resources necessary to raise healthy, happy livestock. And if the answer is no, use all those same resources to get completely ready before you load up the animal trailer.

Wait – Before You Buy Those Homestead Animals…

I don’t often write an article from a negative perspective or use “click bait” words like STOP! I also don’t often get on a soap box about potentially problematic homesteading topics.

Over the years, I’ve found that most issues work themselves out on the homestead over time and will improve with diligent striving. We’re learning every day and every day becoming better homesteaders and stewards of the land and animals.

Truthfully, when we’re first getting started with the homestead lifestyle, we’re going to make mistakes, and lots of them. However, these mistakes help us learn valuable lessons.

Even as we gain experience, study books, attend workshops, and practice what we learn, loss still strikes and mistakes still happen. Having said that, however, there is one issue that does vex me a great deal.

That is when homesteaders take on the honor and burden of homestead animals before they’re actually prepared to care for them responsibly. The livestock almost always suffer as a result, bringing frustration, poor health, and even loss.

As grown-up, mature homesteaders who take our stewardships seriously, we can all learn to be more responsible and prepared when it comes to bringing homestead animals onto our land.

More Homestead Animal Resources for When You’re Ready:

5 Small Livestock Options for Small Homesteads

Raising Ducks for Meat & Eggs on the Homestead

Do I Want to Raise Meat Animals?

For Newbies with Homestead Animals

If you’re brand new to homesteading and homestead animals, the first thing to know is that you can learn everything you need to know about the animals you choose to raise. You won’t know everything, but you’ll learn enough to get started well.

Plan now to read a lot, take notes, attend a class, make a budget, gather materials, and otherwise prepare to the best of your ability.

You may also need to resolve now to say NO to getting homestead animals before you’ve gone through this process. Sometimes, we really are entranced by those adorable chicks at the feed store. Make a goal to resist buying them before you’ve completed your preparations.

If you’re new to homesteading or need a reminder, write this down somewhere:

1. Homestead animals are not an impulse buy. They’re living things that require quality housing, feed, pasture, and care. Prepare for them on the homestead first, and then purchase them.
2. A quality homestead animal is never free. If someone is offering you free livestock, turn them down politely unless you already have the infrastructure in place and you are 100% positive they aren’t ill, have poor genetics, or are otherwise unsuitable. Even if they are quality animals, they still require housing and feed, none of which is free.
3. Homestead animals are deserving of respect, courtesy, and even affection. Whatever you may believe about an animal’s soul, they are living things that perform a vital function on the homestead and are, therefore, deserving of our regard and consideration.

The Result of NOT Preparing Adequately for Homestead Animals

Impulse buying homestead animals results in stress for the homesteader and often an unhealthy environment for the livestock. I’ve seen too many animals suffer because their owners…

• didn’t provide adequate housing for new moms and babies, leaving them vulnerable to predators and dogs.
• didn’t provide adequate shelter from cold winter winds, leaving them vulnerable to illness.
• didn’t provide clean water in the hot summer temperatures, leaving them vulnerable to heat stroke.
• didn’t provide adequately balanced nutrition, including mineral supplements, leaving the animals vulnerable to difficult pregnancies, deliveries, and nursing of their young.
• didn’t provide a way to rotate pasture and run areas, leaving the animals vulnerable to pathogen and parasite build up.
• didn’t provide fencing or guard dogs, leaving the animals vulnerable to predators both during the day and overnight.

And in general didn’t educate themselves enough to be equal to the task of properly caring of animals specific to their needs.

All of these scenarios can compromise the health of the homestead animal and even lead to its premature and unnecessary death.

Where to Begin With Homestead Animals

The most common homestead animal to begin with is chickens because they’re small, and are relatively simple to house and feed. Plus, they produce eggs, which are a highly desirable product whether you’re eating them yourself or selling them.

Let’s say, you’ve decided to begin your homestead animal ventures with a small flock of laying hens. Here are the first things you should put on your list to learn about:

1. Legalities
2. Housing & Fencing
3. Feed & Water
4. Health & Loss
5. Chore Assignments
6. How to Deal With Problems

Are Your Homestead Animals Legal?

The very first thing to do is to discover if homestead animals are legal on your land. When you’re looking for homestead land for sale, check for Homeowners Association rules, codes, covenants, and restrictions. Are homestead animals legal where you are?

Do a quick Internet search of your city and state, and include the words “livestock” and “code”. You should be able to see if your city’s code and ordinances are online. Read through them carefully!

Write down questions, if you have them. Pretty much each city has their code online at this point but sometimes the language can be hard to understand if its heavy on the legal-eaze.

Be sure you speak to a live human at your city and county office to ask questions.

If you ever have questions or are unclear about anything, always get verbal confirmation. Here are some considerations for which we should find data:

• What kind of homestead animals can you have? How many? 
• How many of their offspring can be present on the homestead and for how long?
• What kind of fencing and housing requirements are in place? Do you see any stipulations on flooring or ventilation?
• Are there rules about dealing with waste and waste water?
• Can you butcher homestead animals on your property?
• Are you able to sell homestead animals or animal products from the homestead?

If you are just beginning to ask questions about a homestead land for sale in an area new to you, try to find a local homesteader to speak with. They can help you with the vagaries of homestead animals laws in the town or county.

Housing for Homestead Animals

All homestead animals require some kind of housing and the housing should have certain features.

1. Housing should have a good roof to protect from rain, snow, and hot sun.
2. The walls of the housing should be tight to prevent cold drafts. Ideally it should also have a way to ventilate the shelter during the summer – something like a window or removable panel.
3. Protection from predators is one of the most important things that homestead animal housing provides.
4. Plan to provide separate housing for mothers and their babies. For example, broody hens should have a place set apart for them to peacefully hatch chicks and then tend the babies without interference from other chickens, homestead dogs, or predators.

This last consideration is of particular importance.

A Special Place for Moms & Babies

Creating and maintaining breeding schedules for your homestead animals is a great way to ensure healthy herds and flocks, and maintain a constant supply of livestock. Mothers and babies perform an important role on the homestead and they need their own place to do their work.

For example, to support a broody chicken, put her in her own safe pen with food and water. This ensures that she can calmly sit on her nest for the 21 days it takes hatch out chicks.

If you leave her in the coop with all the other chickens, they’re going to be in and out of her nest, walking on her and her eggs. Other hens will also start laying in her nest, thereby confusing the eggs.

The broody hen may also come out of her broody state because of the interference of other chickens in the coop. This is not what you want if you’re hoping to hatch out chicks!

Take the time and make the effort to arrange a broody/chick area and other special birthing/mothering pens.

Fencing for Homestead Animals

Fencing for homestead animals is important no matter how many you have or how large your homestead.

• Animals, like children, need to know their boundaries. This keeps them, you, your kids, your neighbors, and passing motorists safe.
• Quality fences also keep predators out to a certain degree, depending on the predator. Bare minimum, fences are a deterrent.
• Another thing to know about fencing is that is has to be checked every day, all over the homestead. Yes, every day.

All animals have to do all day is to figure out how to break out of their enclosures and many will if you’re not paying attention. Also, accidents happen like trees falling on fence lines or fence posts rotting out.

Animal Specific Fencing

A few more things to know about homestead animal fencing:

• Each animal has specific fencing requirements. For example, goats and sheep need strong, durable fencing with few openings – this kind of fence is often referred to as “tight”.
• Cows can be fenced with barbed wire because they don’t necessarily try to break out all the time (like goats and sheep), but they lean and rub on fences ALL THE TIME. So, their fencing needs to be super strong.
• Alpacas, on the other hand, are very polite with their fencing. They don’t run fences, don’t lean or push them, don’t try to break out, and are generally very well-mannered.
• Pigs are the smartest livestock on the planet and they will break out of anything, anywhere, anytime. They can be trained to electric fencing when they’re young, but, like I said, they have nothing to do all day but figure out how to get out of their area.

Our smartest hog spent weeks observing how the electric fence shocked and that it would spark if he kicked wet grass against it. He then discovered that if he piled dirt against the lowest wire, the whole system would short out.

At which time, he would go roaming into the vegetable garden and help himself. Evil genius.

• Needless to say, as homesteaders, we need spend time observing and interacting with our animals and make the best decision we can about their fencing needs. Sometimes, we have to try a few different methods to find the best one.

We don’t have to know everything about a homestead animal before we get started with them, we simply need to know enough to successfully begin!

Bottom-line, do fence research for each homestead animal you want to acquire before you bring them onto the homestead.

Feed for Homestead Animals

As you’re researching fencing, be sure you become educated on what your chosen livestock needs to eat to stay healthy. Here are some questions to research and answer:

For small space homesteaders, pasture for the homestead animals may not be possible, and so hay or grain might be the feed of choice. Even so, there are a lot of vegetables we can grow to supplement livestock feed.

You’d also be surprised at what your livestock can forage in your backyard.

Water for Homestead Animals

Without water, nothing lives. Analyze your homestead water assets realistically and decide if you have enough spigots, hoses, water tanks, etc. to support the homestead animals you’re planning to bring onto the land.

It can be helpful to do a water audit of the homestead, so you know exactly how much you’re already using. In water challenged areas, water use amounts are important to monitor.

• Some municipal homesteaders have access to secondary water that is suitable only for watering gardens and not watering homestead animals.
• Other homesteaders might want to consider rainwater collection for livestock, or even digging a pond if you have the room and the topography to support one.
• As you consider how large you want your herds and flocks to be, remember that water is heavy to haul. If you don’t have water spigots near your livestock, you’re going to have use hoses or tote it.
• In extreme weather, this can get complicated and difficult. In summer, water tanks and buckets can get slimy with dirt and algae. In winter, livestock water freezes and needs to be heated to thaw or replaced. All of that equals lots of work.

Decide what you’re going to do about these issues before you bring animals on site.

Health of Your Homestead Animals

One of the first health consideration for any homestead animal is how you will manage their waste. Waste system management with livestock is actually a beneficial process because their manure is useful for turning into compost!

In fact, making a plan for managing all the waste that is produced on our homesteads will mean that we hardly ever “waste” anything at all. Waste isn’t waste until it’s wasted, after all!

Consider this idea further with our article, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle Homestead Waste

You’ll also need to be aware of parasite pressure in your area and in your soil. Parasites can be a real problem for every kind of homestead animal. Your local university extension agent can help educate you on the type and number of the parasites likely to be on your land.

Decide if you want to use conventional chemical wormer, or a natural herbal wormer. Follow the dosage instructions for whichever you chose.

Consider growing fresh herbs to supplement your livestock diet, as well as produce from the garden. Even something as simple as sunflowers can be easily grown to help augment animal feed.

Other health concerns include:

• Culling (putting down) animals when they become injured or ill, or because they exhibit undesirable genetic traits that you want to remove from your breeding program.
• Preparing for pregnancy, labor, and caring for babies.

Both of these situations can be very difficult for the homesteader. Sometimes, we come to a point when we need to kill an animal only to discover that we can’t make ourselves do it. Or a laboring animal needs our help and we realize we’re not prepared to intervene.

• Education from books, videos, and classes is so vital to the success of your homestead but having a local mentor can be just as valuable. 

Find someone close to you that has experience with the homestead animal you’ve chosen to bring onto your land and ask if you can use them as a resource. For example, if you’ve decide to keep bees, find a local beekeeper to help with everyday questions and consult on larger issues.

We had to do this when we lost one of our older, laboring alpaca moms. We called in the help of some farmer friends to assist us in determing what was best to do for her.

She did pass and we had to raise her orphaned alpaca, but I’ll always be so grateful for those mentors who came racing down the hill one dark, stormy night to help us through that experience.

Who Will Be Doing the Homestead Animal Chores?

A lot of your livestock routine will evolve as you learn to live with these animals. That’s totally appropriate, but it’s a good idea to have a realistic idea of who will be handling which chores daily, monthly, annually.

Sometimes, one partner is enthusiastic about homestead animals and you acquire them, only to realize that the less-enthusiastic partner is the one who ends up taking care of them because they work from home. It’s important to manage expectations beforehand!

Daily Livestock Chores Include:

• Feeding
• Watering
• Changing play water (ducks and geese)
• Collecting eggs
• Checking bedding or cleaning out a stall
• Collecting kitchen scraps or garden extras to supplement feed
• Rotating to new pasture

Weekly Chores Include:

• Changing bedding
• Scrubbing water buckets
• Dosing herbal wormer
• Cleaning out a barn stall
• Rotating to new pasture

Some Monthly/Annual Chores Include:

• Shearing
• Hoof/Teeth Trimming
• Deep cleaning of barns, coops, enclosures
• Rotating to new pasture
• Slaughtering/butchering

Who will perform these duties? Even children can have livestock chores, and it’s appropriate that they should help. They’re great workers who naturally love animals, after all!

You will need to be sure someone is going to take responsibility for hard decisions like establishing a breeding program and when to cull ill or poorly performing livestock.

Loss of Your Homestead Animals

Whether from predator attack or accident, you will lose a homestead animal at some point and need to dispose of it responsibly. If the animal is intended to be eaten, sometimes the situation allows for you to butcher and consume it.

• Sometimes, you can feed leftover skin, bones, and meat from a lost animal to your homestead guard dogs to supplement their feed.

Other times, this isn’t possible, as when an animal dies of illness.

Once, early on in our chicken keeping career, we had a chicken simply die for no apparent reason. Since we lived near a agricultural university, we had them do an autopsy (which they provided for a small fee). It turned out our hen had cancer of all things, which would have made her unsuitable to use as dog food.

• If you don’t know for sure what has caused the death, it can be best to err on the side of caution. Have a plan in place for each type of livestock if you need to bury or burn the animal. Learn what option is legal for you, especially if you live in a municipality.

This and the other topics we’ve discussed today may not be exactly what you want to hear in the great excitement of bringing homestead animals onto your land. However, I promise that, if you will take the time to really plan and prepare in these areas, your livestock ventures will be more successful and rewarding.

If you have any questions we didn’t cover, be sure to leave a comment and we’ll try to help!

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