I think as long as you have a good septic drain system (no water puddling up to the surface) you will be fine as long as you keep the pigs off the drain field.
We run into this every year, the best solution (especially if you have a tractor) is to get a couple pigs. Get big bacon pigs (not AGH) that are good tillers. Throw their feed on the ground, and they will till it up and turn it into amazing compost. Then scoop it out with your bucket
It looks like if I go with manual, I should seriously consider the country living mill based on the glowing reviews, but a wonder junior may also be okay. I have tasked my dad into digging through the junk collection, as I am looking into this, I have a vague memory as of 15 years ago or so we had some sort of Corona style grinder from a garage sale. The question is did it move with us or not....
I am considering my own laziness, and thinking about electric. As a lot of the recipes I use take 5 cups of flour, I am more likely to use it if its electric. The Komo and the wondermill seem to be the easiest to find, though the nutrimill is also available.
Those of you with the whisper/wonder mills, what do you think of them (other than the noise level?)
I got a wonder mill jr and didn't really like it. It was way to hard to mill flour fine enough to actually use.
It would not leaven bread.....just thicken the dough. In order to leaven bread you need yeast either manmade from the store or natural yeast from a sourdough starter. I'm assuming you want a gluton free option, try looking up gluten free sourdough starter.
We get ours from Azure standard. I would not recommend grain from a feed mill as it is not meant for human consumption. It won't kill you or anything, but the grain is not very well seperated from the chaffe.
I just thought I would talk about some of my favorite recipes. I have only been making sourdough for a few months, and I love it! I have dabbled a little in making loaves, but mainly make small treats. We've made and thoroughly enjoy bagels, pizza dough, biscuits, english muffins, cinnamon rolls, and pie crusts. Additionally we can make some amazing crackers from the discard!!
All our recipes we have gotten from the blog at little spoon farm.
My 2 cents is that if you plan to start a business in acupuncture or use it for income, then go for it!! It would be a great way to earn money to pay for your homestead.
If you are just doing it for a hobby, that is a steep price to pay.
If you get good livestock and keep them on either fresh grass or deep bedding, then you will have very minimal health issues and wouldn't need acupuncture, and if you did need it on occasion then it would be a lot cheaper to pay an acupuncturist to come in and provide treatment than to do it yourself.
Just a couple thoughts
Definitely put down a lot of mulch (shredded leaves, grass clippings, wood chips, etc) to break down over the winter months on any future garden plots. Especially if you put some chickens on it, you will have a good headstart on a garden for next spring.
I can't speak for goats in particular, but I know for cows and sheep they will avoid poisonous plants so long as they have other food to eat. Sometimes they will nibble a little on a "poisonous" plant, probably for some medicinal benefit. So long as you have decent stock, they should be fine.
I've never over wintered hogs, but we do keep ours on deep bedding. For 3 pigs, I would say a covered 10x15 structure would be sufficient (I'm pretty sure kune kunes are on the smaller side ~400lb full grown).
We do use pigs to till our garden and to develop our pasture, and don't do anything special. If your concerned about parastites just don't plant root crops in that section.
Or you could deworm with classic basic H
My wife and I built up confidence watching Justin Rhodes and Greg Judy consistently for a couple years. Once we were at a place we could finally have cows, we took the plunge and have zero regrets.
Hair sheep are a good way to slowly warm up to cows and learn how to graze, especially if you are trying to learn rotational grazing.
Quality of milk:
We calf share for the first 5-7 months after freshening. You don't get milk for the first month because it all goes to the calf. Then we start separating the calf at night, which produces much bellowing for about a week. After that they still bellow, but only in the evening and morning, but no longer at one am (I always feel so bad for my neighbors).
While calf sharing, we pretty much get 1% milk. Maybe 2% on a good day.
Once we wean the calf using a no bellow nose weaner, our cream line is comparable to a jersey cow and is rich, yellow milk. We start milking twice a day and try to freeze the evening milk to use after we dry her off.
As an owner of a dexter milk cow, there are pros and cons.
Pros: Our cow is very hardy, with no health issues, masitis or otherwise.
She is not picky about feed, produces very well on grass or hay, even if not the best quality. We don't have to feed any grain.
They don't eat as much as a jersey
Our cow has never had any issues calving, and she is 10 years old with plenty of life left in her
Milking is easy to do by hand and does not take long because there is not much milk.
We don't have any extra milk (this is both a pro and a con)
Cons:
We don't get much milk. Right now it is just my wife, 7 month baby, and me. And we go through most of the milk we get just making yogurt, ice cream, and daily consumption.
We only get about 6-12 cups per milking depending on where she is in her lactation. Granted, we don't have a "milking" dexter.....those are much more expensive but she does have a decent udder and teats.
They don't have a long lactactation, it is hard to get dexters to produce for more than 9 months.
Calf sharing can be a pain because she is such a good mother, dexters are very vocal cows
Quality of milk (I will do a follow on post about this one)
Cute calves! We have a dexter for milk cow, a lowline angus cow, and a lowline bull. we also have a yearling that we will process next year at home once he is 24 months.
So many reasons to get cows!! Especially if you are willing to milk. Biggest benefit of milking is you get a guaranteed daily harvest of 10 plus pounds of food (very dependent upon breed and feed conditions). This raw milk is so nutrient dense, does not require any refrigeration (in case of power outages, it will just turn into clabber), you can easily make yogurt and kefir which are so filled with probiotics and thus are very healing to the body. You can make cheese with a little more labor, and the ice cream is amazing!! (side note: we have found the trick to home made ice cream is to dissolve some gelatin in warm milk and add to your batter, this will thicken it during initial mixing but also keep it from freezing all the way for left overs)
With any extra milk (of which we have none) you can use to feed pigs, chickens, etc to cut feed costs or use as fertilizer on the pasture or garden. We pay for all the hay and alfalfa we have to buy for our cows mostly through our milk harvest.
Second best reason is for the quality beef. We harvest our cows at home, hang for 2 plus weeks, and end up with the best beef I’ve ever had. Steaks, roasts, ground, etc.
Lastly, properly managed cows greatly benefit the land! They produce 40 pounds of fertilizer daily, trample organic matter into the fungal duff, and when properly rotated to graze the top half of the grass, will only encourage more grass growth. We have seen amazing pasture benefits ever since we added cows to our home stead.
In my opinion, part of the proper management of cows includes getting hardy, healthy stock that do not require medication, vaccines, or dewormers. These things only kill the land’s microbiome and sick cows only eat into your profit margin (even if you are not selling product, you still have to view your homestead as a business because you are paying yourself to grow your food).
Cows are so versatile and provide great benefit to the land and my larder!!
Ok, that is good to know. Being out west increases the amount of pasture needed per cow because of the minimal rain fall. I have 4 cows and 6 sheep that I graze on 2 acres in West KY. We have dexters and lowline angus. I have to feed a lot of hay, but we make it work.
If I was in your shoes, I would get 2 lowline angus cows. They are smaller than full size angus and are much more efficient on grass. If you have time to do rotational grazing, you should be able to feed them on pasture at least 2-4 months on 10 acres out west by my estimation. The rest of the time you will have to feed hay (ideally round bales). 2 cows would eat about 1.5-2 round bales per month. From what I hear, out west round bales usually cost about $90-$120 per bale. You could also supplement with some grain to reduce the amount of hay.
Getting 2 cows and breeding with AI you should consistently get 2 calves per year. Keep in mind that calves take 18 months to grow out before processing, so you will have to feed them too (if you have two mama cows, plan to feed 4 cows total because of last years babies).
Someone who is used to grazing out west could probably give you a better estimation, but that is my .02
We have dexters and live in W KY. If you are ok feeding hay in the wintertime and have good quality pasture, you can have 1 dexter per acre. If you want to minimize feeding hay in the winter, shoot for 3 acres per cow.
We graze about 2 acres with 4 cows and 6 sheep and move the cows everyday to a new paddock. once we are done with the rotaion (usually about 20 days) then we have to put them in a sacrifice paddock and feed a lot of hay, which is really helping to build up our pasture. We live in an area with cheap hay, plus we milk one of the cows, which helps us to come out on top financially. We are trying to lease some land nearby next year so we don't have to feed as much hay in the future....
Cows are an awesome investment. Beef cows are definitely much easier to manage than milk cows. Milk cows require a place to milk (stanchion), are more prone to health issues, and tie you down to the farm, because you have to milk everyday at a consistent time.
Depending on your families needs, you can go with a dual purpose cow.
We have a dexter family milk cow, she puts out about 1/2 gallon with each milking. right now we are milking twice a day and freezing some for when we dry her off in a month. She is awesome for us right now, until our son starts drinking more milk, then we will likely upgrade or get a second dexter. Dexters are very hardy and if you get good stock, won't have health issues. Because they aren't production milk cows, they are less prone to mastitis and it is much easier to calf share.
We also have lowline angus cows and a lowline bull, and these cows are great too (but only for meat, not milk).
Fill me in on some details so we can help you out
How much land are you on? Where are you located? Are you wanting grassfed or are you planning to feed grain?
What kind of cows are you looking at?
As far as coccidia goes, the first time we raised chicks we starting losing them to coccidia (we let the brooder cleanliness get away from us while we were building their tractor).
We used the homeopathic remedy "Cina" and that stopped it in its tracks. We were literally losing 1 check every hour, and once we gave the remedy in their water, they were fine.
We also obviously had to clean up the brooder because an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.....now we always feed a lot of green grass, use ACV in their water, and put down fresh wood chips daily, and haven't lost a chick to coccidia since......chickens and very hardy and don't need vaccines or medication. If in a clean, warm enviroment with food, water, and grit, they will thrive.
You can try feeding it, and if the cattle need it they will go for it.
I would definitely recommend redmonds salt free choice. It is very difficult for cows to get all the minerals they need without giving free choice.
Greg Judy has some videos on youtube about his mineral program, and using apple cider vinegar mixed with salt for fly control.....
Unfortunately I have found that chickens don't really do much for ticks. I'm not sure about turkeys, but guineas will decimate the tick population!! Get yourself about 30 guinea keets, and expect to lose about 30% in the first week as they are very fragile in the first few days of life.
Build them a good predator proof coop. Once they are a month old put them in the coop for 1 month. This will teach them it is home.
After they live in it for a month, to really train them to the coop, start letting them out about 20 minutes before sunset and throw some feed in there. Once they learn to go back into the coop to get the feed once the sun goes down, they will be ready to take care of your ticks.
Other than guineas, possums are the only other animal I know that will put the hurt on the tick population......
They work great! We just used cedar instead of pressure treated lumber and installed some roll away nest boxes so we don't have to actually enter the coop
We have a lot of loose dogs in our neighborhood as well. They are a royal pain, but we fixed the problem with a 5 strand electric fence around our perimeter. It works well because it keeps our German Shepherd on our property, and she along with the fence keeps all other dogs out. It allows us to be responsible dog owners, I really wish everyone in the country had the mindset to keep control of their dogs.
I know you might not have time for daily moves, but you could start by putting a single wire to split each of your fields in half, and move them into the next paddock when they have eaten down the one they are in.
Would be cheaper and maybe less of a headache than buying a manure spreader...just a thought
Glad your calf is doing well despite the circumstances.
Our dexter just calved as well!
A little bull calf, we use the mom for a milk cow, so we are excited to have fresh milk again.
Hello everyone, we are in the process of planning a little orchard We will be doing about 3 apple trees, a peach and a nectarine. However, the best location is on a southern slope, so the soil will warm up earlier in the spring causing the tree to bloom early and be more susceptible to a late frost :/
I am in western KY (7a) so our winters aren't too extreme but it is pretty common for us to have an oddball late frost.
Any thoughts on whether this is a big enough concern to find a new location or if there is anything I could do to mitigate? Thanks
I have had luck keeping deer out of the garden with a 5 strand steel wire perimeter fence.
I use 3 strand polywire for lanes, and netting for daily paddock moves. This keeps in my sheep and cows quite well.
He definitely has an awesome system, I wish I could copy, but it just doesn't work with my set up :/
I don't want to steer you away from using his system....It is all situational, but are you in a position where you could just let your chickens free range, or do they need to be fenced in?
If they need to be fenced in, it might be worth investing extra money in the 81ft chicken netting for all of your animals. Making your daily chores as streamlined as possible will pay off in the long run.
I thought about making my fences interchangeable but have found it easiest for my particular system to use sheep nettign for sheep and cows and chicken netting for chickens
