Small single or very small herd of dairy, meat, and fiber animals

I'm not there yet, but I figured I'd ask anyway since it's a topic of interest long term. We would like an animal that can produce milk, fiber, and meat. We don't have enough area for about anything sizeable. A grazer is essentially,  and being incognito in the city is also super important.  I've considered a miniature sheep with a poodle hair cut,  but I hear they are loud if they are alone. I hear chevrotain are tamable, but I think they are exotic pets and they don't look like they have much meat on them.  Thanks ahead of time!

Sheep are herd animals and keeping one by itself will be stressful to it. So yes it will likely be loud or try to escape. A single sheep is not a good choice for being incognito. Even when they are not alone, ewes with lambs spend a lot of time calling for their lambs to follow them. Sheep will produce milk, meat and fibre, but no breed of sheep does all 3 well. The milk sheep will be skinny, have less robust lambs, and not so nice wool, some may have reasonably meaty lambs. The sheep with nice wool are mostly dual purpose as meat breeds, these will have just enough milk for their lambs. There are also strictly meat breeds, that have lots of lambs, not so nice wool, and just enough milk to feed all their lambs.

I think you need to decide on priorites to decide what livestock you want. If you want milk and meat, there are some small milking goat breeds, such as the nigerian dwarf, or kinder.  Goats would be as loud as sheep. If you want fibre and meat, and a completely undetectable animal, angora rabbits would be worth looking at. Rabbits eat green stuff too.

I used to have a neighbour that kept Corridale sheep - she said they were a good triple-purpose breed. Icelandic and Shetland sheep might also be a good choice.

I have heard that sheep milk can be a seasonal treat, rather than a reliable source of year-round milk, so whether you want milk all through the year, or just during spring and summer, will help you decide on an animal.

There was a thread on here recently about Pygora goats - they produce fibre and meat, and can be milked (although I'm not sure if they would milk for as long as a pure dairy breed). You could always get one dairy goat and one fibre goat and keep them together.

I got corriedales and they are not milking sheep, pretty good though at wool and milk. As others have said, there is no perfect sheep out there.

I have read that although you can eat and milk Pygoras, the energy that goes into milk production decreases the quality of the fiber, and they aren't the best meat animals, either. I'm going to get one Nigerian Dwarf milker and one Pygora wether. I have a friend who didn't know what she was doing & bought some Nigerian Dwarfs with tiny teats & she can't milk them. Does anyone know if the Henry Milker is an ok thing to use, and whether it will milk the tiny teats? It seems like it would, but I'd like to get advice from someone with experience. If the Henry Milker will work, I can take one of her "useless" goats off her hands.

Black Welsh Mountain sheep make a great tri-purpose breed.  Milk, wool, and meat.  Very calm, broad diet (they eat like goats as well as sheep, meaning they eat trees as happily as grass), and the females are only about 100 to 120 pounds so they are easy to handle.

Ooooh, those are pretty! And small, too!


I'm really looking at the small, dog-sized sheep for when we get sheep. Shelands are another small sheep breed, and like Kate mentioned, seem to be multipurpose. I've also read that they are pretty hardy sheep, like the Welsh Mountain Sheep. The Shetlands also seem to have a wide variety of colors, which really appeals to me as a knitter.

Triple purpose do exist (Icelandic sheep for example) but the less specialized an animal is the less efficient it is in its task. Add onto that your limited land base and it becomes a challenge.

Are you able to do rabbit cages? A few cages of Angora Rabbits can provide fiber and free up your pasture for milk and meat.

The smallest size ruminant purpose bred is probably the small African goats. Two Nigerian Dwarf Does for milk and mothering, inseminated with Pygmy Goat sperm to produce more meaty kids is my suggestion.

Kyrt Ryder wrote:Triple purpose do exist (Icelandic sheep for example) but the less specialized an animal is the less efficient it is in its task. Add onto that your limited land base and it becomes a challenge.

Are you able to do rabbit cages? A few cages of Angora Rabbits can provide fiber and free up your pasture for milk and meat.

The smallest size ruminant purpose bred is probably the small African goats. Two Nigerian Dwarf Does for milk and mothering, inseminated with Pygmy Goat sperm to produce more meaty kids is my suggestion.

I was going to suggest rabbits as well. They hit the need to be “incognito” in an urban environment, are efficient at converting feed, and the Angoras apparently make lovely fibre.