When thinking about the top must-have animals for the homestead, we like to think in terms of resiliency and support. These three animals help support each other and work together in a way that supports you and your family as well. What are they? Pigs, chickens and a dairy cow!
Why Chickens, Pigs & a Dairy Cow
When you start integrating homestead systems that work together, they will help support you and your family with less overall work.
We love stacking functions (a basic permaculture practice), and it’s part of why we use small-scale multi-species rotational grazing.
So why do we think chickens, pigs and a dairy cow are the three essential animals every homestead needs to be resilient? Because as you stack functions, you start to look at animals and how they can work for you, instead of just being one more thing you need to care for.
Animals are great at taking work off your plate! Chickens can prepare a garden area, pigs can root and clear forest land, and cows are fantastic providers of manure (along with dairy products).
Let’s dive deeper and look at each animal individually for their benefits, then see how they work together.
Chickens
Chickens are an easy animal to start with. Not only do backyard egg-laying chickens provide you with eggs (or meat if raising meat chickens), but they can also do garden prep and provide fertilizer. When your animals work for you, as they’re intended, they are happier and healthier.
Chickens are omnivores, so they can eat almost anything. When living this homestead lifestyle, there should never be any edible item that leaves your kitchen and goes to the trash.
While we’re aware there are some things that chickens shouldn’t eat, you don’t need to get hung up on the specifics. Chickens are very smart and tend to stay away from the foods that aren’t good for them (assuming they’re getting enough to eat). You can read more about what to feed chickens other than feed here.
How Chickens Can Work For You
Chickens are great at clearing and fertilizing land. There are many ways to use them on the homestead.
If you have an area of your property that you’d like to grow a garden, but it’s all grown over or maybe even sod, you can put up some temporary netting and a portable chicken coop and let the chickens get to work. In one season, they will have tilled the land and added nitrogen-rich fertilizer, preparing it for planting.
We like to use our chickens in the pasture. They follow the cows and eat the fly larvae out of the cow patties. While doing so, they help spread the cow’s manure and lay their own manure, fertilizing the pasture and making it healthier.
In the pasture, they get moved more frequently so they’re not destroying the grass, but rather improving it.
Finally, it’s worth mentioning that over the past year, the price of our eggs hasn’t increased at all. In fact, over the past six months, they’ve only gotten cheaper as the chickens are able to free-range outside of the barn to forage for bugs and insects.
Pigs
While chickens may be the foundational homestead animal, we think the next step is pigs. They don’t take up as much space as a cow, so you don’t need as much land to keep them.
Pigs are very useful and productive (with both meat and fat). Since pigs are omnivores, they can eat your kitchen and garden waste. We always joke that we love turning kitchen scraps into bacon.
Beyond that, since pigs can eat almost anything, it’s very easy to grow enough root vegetables, squashes, and sunflowers to supplement their feed, if not eliminate the need to buy feed altogether.
Remember that there are two kinds of pigs: rooting and non-rooting. It’s important that you know how each kind of pig will benefit your homestead.
How Pigs Can Work For You
Pigs are very beneficial workers on the homestead. Not only do they provide delicious meat and valuable fat, but they can clear land better than almost any other animal!
We’ve used rooting pigs on the perimeter of our property to clear the underbrush of the edge of the forest. We also use non-rooting Kune Kune pigs in the pasture for multi-species rotational grazing. Learn more about why we raise KuneKune pigs and think they’re the ultimate homestead pig here.
Dairy Cow
We’re talking about the dairy cow last because it’s often the one most people are resistant to getting. With understanding, we know what it takes to raise a dairy cow (or two)! However, having a dairy source on the homestead is extremely valuable and can help close the loop for these three animals we think are necessary for every homestead.
Dollar for dollar, a dairy cow’s return on investment is one of the highest on the homestead (even over the garden!).
If you purchase raw milk, at the time of this publication, you may be spending between $13-$20 per gallon. In contrast, a dairy cow that eats primarily grass can produce 4-6 gallons of milk per day.
How Cows Can Work For You
Not only will dairy cows produce the milk for you to turn into homemade butter, homemade yogurt, delicious homemade cheeses, sour cream, milk kefir, etc., but it’s likely your family won’t consume all the milk a cow produces each day.
What can you do with that extra milk? Feed your chickens and pigs! Whenever we offer our chickens milk, along with their other fermented chicken feed, the milk is the first thing they go for. We also like to use milk when fermenting the feed for added nutrition.
Beyond that, cows can produce roughly 50 pounds of fertilizer per day (which equates to 18,000 pounds per year)! When managed well with a system like our deep bedding method, that is a very valuable resource that can go back into your garden or pasture or to feed trees and shrubs.
In conclusion, if you have just a bit of acreage on which you can grow grass, you can turn that grass into fertilizer, milk and dairy products, meat, fat sources, and eggs.
If you feel like you don’t have the space to keep a cow, I encourage you to check out the book, Keeping One Cow, to see just how easy it can be on as little as one acre!
More Posts You May Enjoy
- Barn Design Must-Haves
- Barn Management System
- How to Stock Your Barn for Winter
- How to Prioritize Homestead Projects
- Essential Barn Tools for the Homestead
- Rotational Grazing for the Small Homestead
- Adding Another Dairy Cow to the Homestead
- Everything You Need to Know About Raising Meat Chickens
- Raising Backyard Egg-Laying Chickens
