Beating Food Challenges: Raising Meat, Eggs, and Dairy
From rabbits and laying hens to dairy and beef cattle, there are food-producing animals for everything from small backyards to huge ranches.
That’s a good thing, because drought-caused grain shortages are filtering down to supplies of meat, eggs, and dairy products.
An example is the effect on dairy herds, explained by the Daily Dairy Report:
Extreme drought this summer meant higher prices to feed dairy cows, and now the U.S. faces the smallest dairy herd in almost a decade. That means higher milk prices, and not just for the kind you drink. Lots of types of food companies are affected, and the impact depends on the type of milk product they use. (Read more in this article at Marketplace.org.)
Feed issues are causing similar shortages and price hikes in factory and small-farm meat, poultry, and egg production.
What does that mean for us? Now is the time to be thinking about raising some meat, poultry, eggs, or dairy.
Not only will it help with supply challenges, but it’s a great feeling to know that you can provide a complete meal with protein sources to go along with what you raise in the garden.
Think about what will work for you and learn all about it!
Before we move on, we’d like to ask you one small favor.
If you have been finding our content valuable and helpful, could you please help us spread the word?
Our Resource List
Livestock for the backyard or farm:
Backyard Homestead Guide to Raising Farm Animals by Gail Damerow
Small-Scale Livestock Farming: A Grass-Based Approach by Carol Ekarius
Which meat animal should you raise? at HobbyFarms.com
Poultry in general:
Storey’s Guide to Raising Poultry by Glenn Drowns
Pastured Poultry Profits by Joel Salatin
The Small Scale Poultry Flock by Harvey Ussery
Raising Backyard Chickens Made Simple Part 1
Raising Backyard Chickens Made Simple Part 2
Homesteading Today Poultry Forum
Chickens:
Storey’s Guide to Raising Chickens by Gail Damerow
Success With Baby Chicks by Robert Plamondon
The Chicken Encyclopedia by Gail Damerow
The Chicken Chick blog
Fresh Eggs Daily blog
Other poultry:
Raising Quail by Allen Easterly at Backwoods Home Magazine
Raising Ducks by Liz Wright at Mother Earth News
Raising Turkeys at Home by Herman Beck-Chenoweth at Mother Earth News
Raising Guinea Fowl by Jeannette S. Ferguson
Rabbits:
Storey’s Guide to Raising Rabbits by Bob Bennett
Homesteading Today Rabbit Forum
How to Raise Backyard Rabbits by Aubrey Vaughn at Mother Earth News
Beef cattle:
Salad Bar Beef by Joel Salatin
Storey’s Guide to Raising Beef Cattle by Heather Smith Thomas
Homesteading Today Cattle Forum
Raising Beef Cattle on a Few Acres from Utah State University Extension
Dairy cows:
The Backyard Cow by Sue Weaver
Dairy at Home from Hobby Farms Magazine
Storey’s Guide to Raising Pigs by Kelly Klober
Raising Your Own Backyard Pig by Kay Wolfe from Countryside Magazine
Goats:
Storey’s Guide to Raising Dairy Goats by Jerry Belanger
Storey’s Guide to Raising Meat Goats by Maggie Sayer
Raising Goats for Fun and Profit by Janet Wallace from GRIT Magazine
Sheep:
Storey’s Guide to Raising Sheep by Carol Ekarius
Homesteading Today Sheep Forum
Basics of Raising Sheep from Sheep 101
Camelids:
About Alpaca Meat from AlpacaFarmBC.com
About Camel Milk from Oasis Camel Dairy
Camelid Husbandry from Camelidynamics
All About Raising Alpacas by Janet Wallace from GRIT Magazine
All About Raising Llamas by Jon Geller from Mother Earth News
While we’re talking about animals, we can’t leave out fish and honey bees…
Fish/Aquaponics:
How to Raise Fish for Food at Home from Mother Earth News
Honey bees:
Storey’s Guide to Keeping Honey Bees by Richard E. Bonney
Homesteading Today Beekeeping Forum
Raising Honeybees from Beekeeping for Beginners
And don’t forget to evaluate your needs for livestock protection!
Livestock guardians:
RLT Livestock Guardian Animals (donkeys, llamas, livestock guardian dogs)
Key to the Rural Living Today Network blog posts listed above:
RLT = Rural Living Today (our main website and blog: encouragement for the urban/suburban to rural transition)
THS = The Homesteader School (our archive site featuring DIY info and tutorials for sustainable living)
THK = The Homesteader Kitchen (our good eating, cooking from scratch food blog)
Previous posts in our Beating Food Challenges series:
Ten Realistic Ways to Overcome a Food Crisis
More About Beating Food Shortages and High Prices
Beating Food Challenges: Growing Veggies, Herbs, and Fruit
In this series, we’re listing some great resources for each of our ten topics: growing vegetables, herbs, and fruit; raising meat, eggs, and dairy; local food sources and buying freezer meat; food storage; food preservation; sprouting; foraging; bartering; and learning more and more to help along the way.
To get these upcoming posts delivered straight to your email inbox, subscribe in the Rural Living Insider box below or at the upper right corner of this page.
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Thanks for all the links, especially the combination of books and websites! I’ve already been to several of the websites this morning–great information! Mary
Great information ~ thank you so much for sharing.
I don’t twitter; but I ‘liked’ you on Facebook and shared your post on my wall there.
The biggest problem we’ve had is trying to get a house livable. Right now hubby says that is a bigger priority than animals. (We live in an RV, so we’re not homeless.)
We have yet to finish unloading the trailer.
I’m also having trouble finding local sources to get our own stock. The lady across the street came over the other day and when she mentioned cattle, I asked her to remember us if she needed to sell any. She said they didn’t do the dairy any more and mostly sold them as a herd.
Ah well. Things will happen when they’re meant to. He will see to that, he’s taken good care of us so far.
Have a blessed weekend!
The inescapable and too-often forgotten (or avoided) point in most online references, books and magazine articles is the continued tie to off-farm production and processing of feeds. Pastured chickens or backyard rabbits, for instance, are great to propose, but if the animals continue to get their majority of protein from feed-mill grains or processed pellets, one is STILL tied just as close to the industrial (business-as-usual) economy as the neighbor who simply goes to the grocery. Heap atop that the notion of building supplies, electric brooders and incubators, wire cages, etc., etc., and we might well be kidding ourselves as to self-sufficiency. I don’t offer this to mock anything or anyone, just venting the frustration of reality.
Brian. You bring up a real issue and i am thinking I both agree and disagree. You are right, that global economy issues will effect us all somewhat, but I disagree as to the magnitude it will effect local issues, especially in the rural area. For instance, I wouldn’t even need a feed store now to continue raising poutry and pigs. If a local farmer has any grain, i will make my own feed (which is what i do now). RIght now, my feed costs are 30% the costs of the pelletized feed you can buy, fresher and doesn’t have the GMO junk in it. If my feed is limited, i will mor intensly pasture our pigs and chickens. Contrary to “standard status quo” belief and propaganda, they will do just fine making eggs and meat. If there is no food in the stores, people in the city will go hungry. We however, will wake up, feed our animals and continue with what we do.
Certainly some manufactured supplies and equipment are nice, but not absolutely necessary. I can make almost anything, and you can barter with your neighbors for things you don’t have. I don’t know if you live in the city or country, but country living requires work and creativitiy and life will be more difficult, but not nearly as much as someone depending on the just in time food supply system.
I appreciate your attitude of venting your frustration in a good way. MY response though would be to encourage you to take some pro-active steps to be a producer rather than just a consumer, and your future is not in someone elses hand, but in your own!
MY best,
JIm
I am a “modern homesteader” of 20+ years, but I am also very critical of myself and my activities. With some dozen acres only, I can and do produce hay with a neighbor. I also produce vegetable crops and varied livestock for myself and family. If we are truly honest, introspective and eyes-open to our interdependence, we can hardly say ANYthing is sustainable. Rural folk may exist a short time longer than urbanites in a large-scale crisis, but we are all tied to some critical parts of contemporary society.
To deny this is to be less than fully informed, critical or introspective. We ALL pretty much employ and enjoy modern communications from our computers to telephones and beyond. More imporatntly, we are inextricably (including my Amish neighbors) connected to cheap fossil energy – most especially petroleum. VERY little of agriculture – in ANY form – is unaffected.
Growing one’s own or utilizing a neighbor’s crops is without exception a benficiary activity of oil. A single horsepower equates to that of 12 manual laborers…so even at half throttle that 200 HP John Deere is equivalent to the GIFT of 1200 slaves; the old 22 HP Farmall is 132 men in chains and the 8 HP TroyBilt is 48 servants. If I employ draft animals, there is still what is connected to their feed – fossil energy.
Small backyard animals do not thrive without modern things from feed to housing to supplements and meds. I have raised rabbits nearly 3 years on hay and oats alone – things I can produce (still tied to oil), but those rabbits are producing about 1/4 the flesh of what I did using pellets for two decades before.
Everything breaks down with the loss of cheap and easy oil. Only hunting and gathering – pre agrarianism – is sustainable and we’d have to have an unthinkable reconciliation in human population to do that.
So…I am still trying and still doing my thing rurally (though my same Amish neighbors proliferate to their best ability blindly overpopulating this countryside), but realism is a very hard thing to observe and profess without ostracizing one’s self. We all like happy endings much better.
Self-sufficiency and agrarianism are predicaments – there is no real solution. Urbanites who endeavor to cure all in an idyllic lifestyle need to be aware of these things. Heck, most rural folk don’t even get it. I am trying hard to become more adapted to a truly non-oil, non-electric lifestyle, but it is disingenuous to reward/award ourselves that notion without the most critical analysis.
Great list of resources here.
Wow I have been reading the comments and they are very interesting. I am a farmer dealing with the drought issues now and I think there are people who do not know just how hard this will effect them later. I wrote something about this today. I loved that you have all these links. B
Buttons recently posted..There’s No Crying in Farming!
Buttons, that is an awesome post on your blog, though I’m sure it was hard to write. Most of us are probably on the consumer side of the drought effects, and it’s valuable for us to see how it affected producers in the drought-touched areas. Thank you for sharing from your point of view.
Readers, see Buttons’ link in her comment above. She and many others had to make very difficult decisions due to drought-induced feed shortages.
Wow. What a list of great resources! Thanks for sharing!! And for linking up at NOH
Tiffany recently posted..10 Facts To Make Your New Life in Germany Easier
Great list for the new and seasoned homesteader!
Nancy recently posted..Grab a black poster board and…
Great list of resources. I just posted it to me Facebook page, and added you to my sidebar. There are so many modern challenges to raising your own food. This is a great place to start.
Gretchen recently posted..Preparing Your Homestead for a Hurricane
Thanks, Gretchen–it’s great to be networking with you!