Tish Toren

I have raised guinea pigs on some scale, tho not for food. They are small, short-legged, have very little sense of self-preservation, so extremely vulnerable to predation... I really can't imagine "free ranging" them without huge losses. Even your neighbor's cat (or your own) could make off with one easily enough. Tho they are easy to raise in a colony set-up, so if you could construct a really secure, movable tractor type enclosure that would give them a better chance of surviving to harvest. Electric poultry net would not contain the young ones or protect the adults from birds of prey.

The gestation period is much longer than other rodents, and more than 2x as long as rabbits, but babies are born furred and with eyes open, rather than as squirmy "pinkies". They do, however, grow much more slowly than meat rabbits, which can reach 4lb or more at 8 weeks, while a gp the same age might weigh 1lb. And they are not quiet, lol, their frequent, hi-pitched squealing is why they are called "pigs", so not a good choice if you have close neighbors and are trying to raise meat in town. Rabbits are quiet.

The problem with "new breeds", especially crosses of breeds with wildly different histories and selected working balances, is predictability.

Genetics are not like cooking, where you can add a little of this or that and get a uniform blend of "flavors" in a litter the way you would in a pot of soup. In dogs, the F1 cross will get a more predictable balance of traits, simply because the 2 fullblooded  parents will each contribute roughly 50%. Once you breed on with crossbred parents the proportions of traits can vary wildly. Even within the LGD breed group there will be variation, add in and akc pet breed like St Bernard and it's a crapshoot, add a highly prey/chase driven breed, like GSD, and any chance of predictability goes out the window. LGD/herding crosses are everywhere now, they are the most common farm oops breeding, and are often downright dangerous.

elle sagenev wrote: Have ya'll found your pigs surprisingly useful in any way?

American guinea hogs are delightful, great temperaments, manageable size to home process, old southeastern US breed known for "making the yard safe for children".

They sure do! When we lived in Oklahoma and allowed them to range, they either ate or drove off all the rattlesnakes <3

Thanks, everyone (and especially Shauna ) for the suggestions and encouragement! I probably should have mentioned I am not new to farming, gardening, composting, and raising livestock,  have been at it since the 80s. And when I lived in places where I could get free woodchips brought them in by the truckload! There just aren't a lot of trees here, so nothing to chip, it's the high plains, where the wind comes whipping along unobstructed, and any trees here that are not in the vicinity of the old house benefitting from condensation drip died years ago in the droughts without watering, they are dessicated standing skeletons/ future firewood now, or someday sunken hugel-food. Mulch that isn't weighted down or caught in stubble or undergrowth just blows away, it's impossible to keep it moist enough to stay in place on bare ground. So I'm thinking the answer is to get cover crops and other plants in, closely spaced, and maybe strategically add mulch with rocks to help hold things down and collect some condensation.  

Heavy equipment is not an option, I couldn't even afford the trucking to get it out here, nearest town with a grocery and a feed store is 50 miles away, nearest bigger town  is a hundred+. It is mostly flat, a few higher areas near the house are inhabited by pocket gophers, their population is shrinking thanks to good farm dogs, but it will be awhile before it will be safe to plant anything in the ground in that area, so far just doing containers. The dogs also happily deter other plant-eating wildlife from visiting, so that's not a concern. And there are some lower places where it appears the long-ago humans may have directed runoff away from the house lot into a neighboring cow pasture, or could just be where they drove across the property before it was divided, seems more compacted. They are not on contour but I could probably build up lower parts to capture, add mulch and plant them.

It's probably hard for someone from the east coast with 45+ inches of rain and forests all around them to imagine the challenges out here . Think "Greening the Desert", lol.  I am from NY and raised my kids on 70 acres in the Fingerlakes, so know what it's like to be able to grow basically  anything with a minimum of effort.  Also farmed in FL, MO. and most recently the OK panhandle (even drier!) as well, which was a shock for sure, and not somewhere I wanted to stay long. And did not own that place so couldn't make any changes to the property, just raised livestock and hid out in the house when the wind storms blew miles-wide clouds of glyphosated topsoil across the plains. Here in this part of NM we don't see the tillage exposed soils everywhere, I'm surrounded by rangeland and a few places with irrigated alfalfa.

I have hand-dug some small trenches to slow and redirect rain from running off, and filled them with prunings, chopped/dropped weeds and composted chicken litter. They are still too small to plant out, but I know I will need to protect the baby trees, berry plants, others, and have been situating coops and sheep/goat sheds/paddocks to block prevailing winds and plan on building more, and have been observing and identifying other microclimates. The pallet corrals for baby trees are a great idea, thank,s will also protect them from my goats. Someone on another high, dry thread mentioned planting the nitrogen fixers close, touching the other plantings, to shelter and  help them establish, that makes good sense, too. Main reason I am keeping sheep and goats is to run cheap hay through them to help build soil. Also because they are entertaining, delicious, don't need fossil fuels to run and quietly mow overgrown, weedy areas, and produce valuable fine wool and mohair. The fleece skirtings (soiled/unsaleable parts) are great to use as mulch, too, stay in place better than vm, and in planting holes, hold a lot of moisture as they break down. Feeling a little less overwhelmed now, can you tell? Thanks again!

"

Eric Hanson wrote:I don’t know where this solution lands at on the Permie scale, but one option I have used is ground up castor beans."

I don't know of any toxicity to other plants, but all parts of the  castor plant and especially the beans contain ricin, a deadly poison. So pets, other wildlife, chickens/other livestock, perhaps even beneficial soil organisms, all will be at risk.

What's worked pretty well for me is periodic flooding and Yolanda, a chihuahua terrier mix that is a holy terror on vermin. Still have some burrows along the road frontage where there is a mounded up area of drier, sandy soil that needs some kind of earthwork and plantings that 1) won't immediately be devoured by gophers, lol, and 2) won't interfere with overhead and underground utility lines.

Zone 6b, old farmhouse on 10 dusty, degraded acres,  abandoned for years. There are some large elms around the house/yard where birds spread an understory of blackcurrant bushes from the 2 ancient, mostly dead ones prev owner/gardner planted decades ago before she died. This natural process/symbiosis is what reminded me of what I'd read about permaculture back in the 80s, I was living in the FL Keys where I had a 1/3 acre tropical food forest plus grew annual fruit and veg for abut 10 years. So got excited and have been exhaustively researching. BUt the climate here is so challenging I'm at a loss as to how to proceed aside from starting lots of legume trees/shrubs to slow the wind down, it is brutal. I have a couple dozen thornless honey locusts started in 1 gal pots, comfrey, blackberries, nanking  cherry, and a few buffalo berry about 3" tall. Had a bunch of siberian peas started, too, but these apparently are a delicacy, and were eaten to the ground by grasshoppers. Ranging lots of poultry eliminated the grasshopper problem, and I am rotating and feeding sheep and goats roundbale hay, so slowly filling ruts, adding organic material and improving the open, flat ground where wind eroded, sandy channels surround isolated clumps of native grass and patches of prickly pear, and areas disturbed by accumulating blowdirt or where old farm bldgs were knocked down there are spiny gourds& nightshades, some quelitas, and tumbleweeds.

Long-gone prev  owner (her name was Goldie also planted roses, lilacs, other ornamentals in the dripline of the metal roof, and asparagus, apparently, as a brave, lone spear appeared in the spring after I dug away the 12-18" layer of blowdirt accumulated against the south side of the house. All these have been watered and kept alive by condensation from the steep, unguttered metal roof during the long periods between rains, and there are a couple of rhubarb clumps surviving in the dripline on the south side of the garage/shop. There are brief times the monsoon rains have water cascading off the roof, and I know it would be better to add gutters and harvest it. But it's amazing Goldie's garden survived decades with no human attention at all.

Love this. All my winter squash plants are from grocery squash. Last year i grew a bunch of the little snacking pepper seeds, ate lots of,"free" peppers, gave lots of plants away to friends. One friend put 2 of them in attractive pots and gave them to her grandkids for Christmas covered in sweet, red, kid-sized peppers