Homesteading livestock / Hobby farming ( Archived) (35)

Years ago there was a movement to leave the fast paced modern high pressure lifestyle of city living and return to a simpler more enjoyable way of life. It was called the "Back To The Land Movement". This movement came about by people who were fed up with the direction the world was heading with everybody trying to get ahead by stepping on everybody else, raping the planet, starting wars over natural resources like crude oil and generally "keeping up with the Jones". The movement coincided with the environmental movement which sought to undo the years of damage done to the Eco system by greed and ignorance. People were fed up with streams full of dead fish which would burst into flames if you tossed a match in them because they were filled with volatile chemicals and drain oil dumped in them indiscriminately. These interrelated movements even had a Bible, it was called "The Mother Earth News" (TMEN). For a while I had a subscription to it. We couldn't wait to get the next issue and we would go through it page by page.
The movements haven't died, but they have matured and I'm pleased to see that much of the new consciousness that was born in those heady days are normal accepted practices today like recycling and laws put in place to prevent wreaking havoc on the land.
Sorry for preaching.

Many families have decided to get into backyard farming on a very small scale like raising chickens for meat and eggs, pigs for meat and to make some extra money by selling off the offspring (a healthy Sow will produce 2 litters of roughly 10 piglets each per year) a cow for milk, meat and also to sell off the calfs. I've done all of the above and for sheer profit Nothing comes close to raising pigs. They do take work though.
Besides "TMEN" there were/are booklets from companies which produce feed for the livestock industry such as "Carnation" that contain loads of valuable information on how to raise livestock. The problem is though that the advice and regimins outlined in these booklets can't always be "scaled down" to a small backyard operation and in many cases the advice given is actually wrong.
I will give you 2 examples. One concerns pigs and the other concerns chickens.
In the booklet from Carnation entitled "Swine". They recommend "docking" the tails of baby piglets. Basically cutting off the little curley tail leaving only a little nub. The reason for this is they are assuming you are raising hundreds of pigs in close (over crowded) confinement which is typical of a very large commercial hog operation. This practice is supposed to prevent one pig from biting off the tail of another pig. A pig can't bite off a non existant tail. The problem with this advice besides being unnesserary, is that there is no better indicator of the health of a pig than how the tail is carried. A healthy pigs the tail is up and curls in a circle, a sick pigs tail hangs straight down.

Chickens:
There is an old timey idea which says you should clip the top beak of a baby chick back to prevent cannibalism. Again this was believed to be helpful by preventing one chicken from damaging another chicken when they were held in close (over crowded) confinement such as in a commercial egg operation where the birds have barely enough room to turn around and they never see the light of day or ever set foot on the ground. I recently bought 6 hens from an old (85 years) farmer but didn't notice the beaks were cut until I got them home. Had I been aware of this he would still own these 6 hens. The problem with cutting the beaks, besides being unnecessary, is that with the beaks cut, the chicken can not eat off the ground but can only eat from a feeder. I kind of wonder if this whole idea wasn't dreamed up by feed producers to prevent a chicken from foraging for food like bugs and grasses and forcing it to consume more factory supplied feed. I do notice that I am going through feed MORE THAT DOUBLE the rate since doubling my head count from 6 to 12. Besides making it impossible for these birds to eat off the ground they look really stupid.

I had a couple of Peking ducks once but stray dogs killed them both. One day while they were still alive a neighbor came by to chew the fat and while we were talking one of the ducks came all the way up the hill from the pond about a 50 yard walk up hill and was quacking all around my legs. They never ventured away from the pond so this behavior was very strange. I had my back to the pond and suddenly while the duck was quacking my neighbor asked me if I was burning off the dead grass. I said no, why and I turned around to see a big grass fire down by the pond. It seems it was triggered by the electric fence jumping a spark to a blade of grass. The duck came up to warn me that the place was on fire. I was stunned to learn just how smart an animal really is. I've treated all my animals with total respect since that event because it taught me that they are way more aware about things than I ever realized.
I never heard of raising Geese is there a market for that?

So your KuneKune pigs are really pets as evidenced by you naming them? Plus they wouldn't be worth much as food being so small. Free range is the only way to keep chickens of course you will lose a few now and then. I shot a young Coyote last week as it was trying to find a way into my chicken pen. I'm fairly sure I hit it because it was a clean shot with a .22 but it ran off and never came back. I would never shoot an Eagle though, for one thing I'm pretty sure they are protected.
My neighbors had a Black Lab which was a chicken killer and she killed at least 2 dozen of my chickens before she got too fat and old to catch them. She never ate them, just killed them. Something was amiss in her training.