So you want to keep some animals
So you are thinking about getting some animals to keep on your smallholding or in your garden.
Before you ever get to the point of deciding what individual breeds you would like to keep, there are some basic things you need to think about and some simple questions you need to answer. Once these initial considerations have been resolved you can progress to the next stage where you can think about the choice of the various breeds that might be suitable for your needs.
1. Are you prepared to commit yourself to animals that will need to be seen every day and may live between 3 and twenty years (chickens and cattle)?
If you value your holidays and free weekends you will need the support of family, neighbours or an animal sitting agency. We have met people who expect to put their sheep on a paddock and then sit back and enjoy looking at the rural setting they have created. The first thing to realise is that keeping animals in a satisfactory way is hard work and that sheep are the most labour intensive of all the livestock options.
2. What is your philosophy going to be for keeping your animals ? Commercial production. Welfare friendly. Organic.
Over the last decade or so, most people thinking about buying a smallholding are doing so because they want to produce a product that is as natural as possible and in a way which does not exploit the animals. Organic is an obvious solution to this requirement but true organic is a complex business and takes time to achieve. Your land has to be farmed on organic principles for a number of years. All your livestock food supplies have to be from organic sources. The cost of bought-in, organic animal food, even if you can find a supplier, is high and the economics of an organic enterprise need to be examined in detail and with great care.
In an organic system all your animal treatments have to follow organic principles and putting an organic veterinary philosophy into practice really demands a sound knowledge of the animals and their potential ailments.
At Baylham House we can't follow the true organic system as we are not large enough to be able to produce our own feed. Although we are unable to follow a truly organic regime we have certain principles that we adhere to in managing our livestock and you might like to consider what principles you will use.
- We never send an animal to market as we want to know what happens to our stock from start to finish.
- We use conventional veterinary treatments only on a "as required" basis but we do not hesitate to use a Vet to give advice or administer treatment whenever we have doubts or lack experience.
- We do not use any growth promoters or any feed with additives.
- We manage our stock at all times with welfare as a priority and on the basis of minimum stress.
3. What exactly do you want the livestock for ? Lawn mowers? Pets? Milk? Meat? Wool? Selling young stock?
The answer to this will narrow down the problem of selecting the breeds to chose from and will to some extent will dictate the way in which you will have to keep them.
4. Are you going to breed from them ? If so:
A. Do you want to breed pure bred animals ?
The procedure for the registration of pedigree animals varies considerably with each Breed Society and a knowledge of the more difficult procedures might influence your choice of breed.
B. Are you prepared to have the offspring slaughtered?
An inability to face up to having surplus animals slaughtered will have a significant influence on the decisions you make. It will certainly inhibit your ability to breed as, without slaughter, you will end up with more and more animals because you are unlikely to be able to sell all of them for breeding. There is always a surplus of males.
5. What kind of land do you have ? Is it:
The answer to this question may dictate the kind of livestock that you can think about keeping and will certainly determine your possible need for winter housing.
6. What kind of buildings do you have ?
7. Does the grazing have water, either natural streams or piped ?
Your animals must have constant access to clean, fresh water.
8. What is the condition and make up of your pasture ?
Some, but not all, grazing breeds will find very rough pasture adequate for survival but the better the pasture quality, the better they will do and the lower will be your supplementary feed costs. If your land has really rough vegetation, then a couple of years with some old fashioned pigs will clear it for you and you can then re-seed it with a mixture to exactly meet your plans for the future.
Don’t expect goats to make good lawn mowers. They are browsers rather than grazers.
9. Is your grazing fenced ? If so, what is its condition ?
Pigs, cattle and sheep on their own all have slightly different fencing needs though if you want to use grazing for all kinds of stock you can build a multi-purpose system. If you are thinking about doing the fencing yourself take a look at some professionally erected fencing first to see what to aim for. Good solid straining posts and properly tensioned fencing are the essential requirements that you must have.
10. What sort of livestock farming is undertaken locally ?
When you start to keep animals the ability to seek advice from local farmers is invaluable. A well established network of local contacts will not only be useful for helping you to deal with livestock problems but may provide you with a cheaper source of animal food and the ability to hire, or even borrow, machinery for all sorts of jobs around the smallholding.
A local Smallholders Society will provide a useful pool of contacts, some of whom are beginners like you and others who have been at it for a long time and have "been there, done that". You must find your local society and join them.
11. Is there a convenient Vet's practice that has farm animal expertise(ie as opposed one concentrating on dealing with small animals) ?
You are better off going farther afield or even paying a little more in order to find the right veterinary expertise. Vets who have not touched a sheep since leaving college will not inspire confidence even though they will have had the training.
12. Where is your nearest abattoir ? Does it operate to the welfare standards that will treat your animals the way you would wish ?
Unfortunately this is something that you will probably only discover from experience because you will probably find that the majority of livestock farmers who use the abattoir will find it perfectly acceptable even if you find fault with it. They will think you are too soft and you will think they lack feeling for their animals. Nevertheless we have found abattoirs that really are totally unacceptable by my standards.
13. Do you have any animal handling equipment ?
Lots of hurdles will suffice for most sheep handling tasks and really should be available on your holding before the sheep arrive. With hurdles you can build pens, races and crushes, all to your own design and to fit whatever buildings or spaces that you already have available.
As your shepherding experience expands you will think of other bits of equipment that would be useful and which can often be picked up at farm sales which in themselves are interesting to go to even if you don’t buy anything. Foot bath, weighing machine, and a roll-over crate all come to mind. If you do buy something at a sale and you see all the local farmers smiling you will probably find you have bought your second hand bargain for more than a brand new item. Do your homework on prices for new items before you go to the sale.
14. What are your local sources of animal food ?
Buying animal food by the bag is the most expensive way to feed them but it is the only practical solution if you only have a few. Allen & Page do a wide selection of non-additive foods for smallholders’ animals and they also have a nutritionist available to answer queries on the telephone. We have been through the phase of mixing our own feed using constituents bought in bulk via our neighbours. We have now reverted to using bagged feed for all our stock as it saves an enormous time and we can fetch it once a week from the supplier. However, if you plan to mix your own ration you must talk to your local trading standards office as you need a licence from them to allow you to mix your own. In addition to concentrate feeds you will need access to supplies of hay and straw. Where can you get it? Where will you store it? How will you fetch it? How will you handle it?
15. Is any livestock training available locally ?
LANTRA is the organisation responsible for supporting the skills needed for work in the agricultural and environmental sectors. They have a website http://www.lantra.co.uk/ which includes a course finding facility on one of its pages. This is a good starting point to see if there is likely to be anything available in your area which will help you brush up in any areas that you may not feel totally confident. Alternatively, try your nearest Agricultural College.
If you are true novices at the livestock game I really do advise you to try and find a basic course of some kind to provide you with a firm foundation on which you can build for, if your stockmanship is inadequate, it is your animals that will suffer. However, some local, knowledgeable contacts will normally be sufficient to guide you in your initial steps at animal husbandry.
On the other hand lambing is a different matter and I would strongly advise either a formal lambing course or at least some practical experience with a local flock in order to grasp the rudiments of lambing before you embark on it with your own animals. At three o'clock in the morning, in the dark, with a torch, in the snow, trying to deal with a ewe who has twin lambs jumbled up and stuck and they need to be sorted out, pushed back and turned round before they can be delivered and there is nobody you can turn to..... This is the kind of horrendous nightmare that you need to avoid and a bit of basic knowledge plus self confidence works wonders.
Once you have thought about the points I have mentioned above, and answered the basic questions I have posed, you should be able to decide on your livestock breeds and numbers by using your head and not your heart. Once these decisions have been made you will need to identify the tasks on your holding that must be completed before your livestock arrives.
The window of opportunity for buying good young stock can be quite limited for some breeds so you must be ready in time.
Final word of advice.
Develop slowly and you will learn as you go. Take on too much too quickly and you will find that the problems of keeping livestock will become stressful and not at all enjoyable. If you limit your tasks to keep within your capabilities, the joys of keeping animals far outweigh any difficulties they may bring.