What can you do with 5 acres? Part 3

Heather White

Now if you have 5 acres then you could carry every livestock from one acre plus you could add a milk cow and her calf. Also, you would be able to carry poultry, rabbits, few pigs and sheep or goats. Limit the number of livestock is very important as you don’t want to overtax your land. I would recommend that if you have a dairy cow and her baby, a few chickens, ducks and turkeys however no sheep or goats. If you wish not to carry a dairy cow and her calf, then you could carry sheep or goats somewhere around 3 to 10 of each along with your poultry, pigs, and rabbits.

 Some homesteaders find they can carry both dairy and sheep, but space would be very limited. The average cow needs 3 acres a year. This means that her and the baby would need to be moved daily. Rotation is great however it would be severely limited should you choose to growing hay fields, wheat, and large garden for the family. A serious garden for a family of four is 2 full acres for year-round production and you can’t rotate the cattle in this area while growing.

The ideal of homesteading is providing all that is needed to support your family with limited amounts of purchased items.

 When deciding on livestock, first decide what the family or you will eat? If you don’t like rabbit meat, then I would not recommend you raise them. Second, all livestock should have several uses on the homestead. For an example. I love rabbit meat. Rabbits provide me meat, cold manure, and pelt for clothes when I process them. They also can live off everything I grow, they are very quiet, an excellent quality. The only thing I must purchase for them is their minerals which is minimal.  As with most livestock minerals must be purchased.  

Every livestock must provide you with more than one use on your homestead. Cattle provide you with several things such as milk, meat, draft power, and hot manure.  The raw milk is a whole food which can be used by you to drink, make butter, yogurt, sour cream, heavy cream for coffee 😊, cheese and more. You can also use the milk to feed your pigs and chickens. Yes, meat chickens are recommended to be finished with raw milk. You of course can always take them to freezer camp or can up the meat for off grid living. They can be trained to use to pull plows, logs and even their own hay to the fields. Then there’s the wonderful hot manure. Hot manure can be used for heating up water during those cold winter months. As it decomposes it produces heat in the range of 160 degrees or more which with proper placement of waterlines could heat outside water for the livestock. When it is finished decomposing you add it to your compost pile and your ready for next years garden inputs. Also, you could use the same hot pile for making black garlic. This is a specialty garlic. Place garlic in a glass jar with lid. Place deep inside the hot pile, cover, and leave there 60 days or more depending on the heat, longer is better. Of course you still want to grow your own fruit trees, fruit bushes and have your own bee hives.