Chickens

How to Start A Homestead

December 30, 2025 by Leigh Leave a Comment

People across the country are concerned with the state of the grocery stores and supply chain. People who previously thought they could get anything they needed from a store, have quickly come to realize that is no longer the case. Shortages of basic necessities are becoming more common and leading many people to think about starting a homestead. But how to start a homestead?

Starting A Homestead

Most people don’t know where to start when it comes to farming, livestock, and other “farming” things. Well, welcome to the club. If you were not born into the lifestyle, and many of us weren’t, starting a homestead can be a daunting task. The good news is when you dive into the world of homesteading you will realize that it looks very different to everyone. Not mention the amount of resources available.

Before You Start a Homestead

“Starting a homestead” doesn’t mean doing everything at once.
It means choosing one system and building from there.

If you’re still figuring out what homesteading actually looks like in real life, start here:
👉 What Homesteading Really Means (and What It Doesn’t)

I talked in another posts that homesteading is a spirit, not a set of hard fast rules. I know homesteaders that live in a subdivision on less than an acre and others that have hundreds of acres. Some people love keeping pigs and some that don’t. We have goats, not everyone likes them. There are no rules to homesteading because homesteading is about independence, not acreage, livestock, and gardens.

Understanding Why You Want To Start A Homestead

I suggest really thinking about the why. Why do you want to homestead? What does homesteading look like to you? Can you do the things that you think a homestead is? What are your current capabilities and disabilities? Can you overcome them? What does the infrastructure of your homestead look like?

Our dream of homesteading started as a cabin in the woods fifteen years ago. As the world around us has changed, so has our dream. I wanted a garden for fresh produce, now I want a garden that will fully sustain us. Livestock? Nah, I’m good with my dogs and cats. Until we saw what the price of meat was doing. Your dreams can evolve and devolve and that’s just fine.

This Is Where Most People Get Stuck

Homesteading only works if you turn ideas into a plan — otherwise it becomes overwhelming fast.

This is the system I use to decide what to tackle first and what can wait:
👉 My Daily Homestead Schedule (What Actually Gets Done)

Let’s Start With Animals

Every new homesteader thinks they have to have pigs, cows, chickens, and other livestock when they start homesteading. We almost fell into this trap and thankfully cooler heads prevailed before we dove in head first. However, we have had our share of Uh-Oh’s and it has been a very expensive lesson to learn the hard way. We weren’t ready for goats and it has been a very steep learning curve. But worth every penny and heartbreak. So start small and grow from there.

Oakley and Bailey the goats — Oakley and Bailey

Chickens

Chickens are a great way to have that homestead feel, without all the extra work of a homestead. They are relatively easy creatures that don’t require around the clock work. Our chickens are set it and forget it. Once they were out of the brooder and into their coop, they had feed in the morning and night, and free range during the day. They also have access to plenty of water throughout the property. They don’t require a ton of upkeep.

Raising dual purpose meat chickens is also a great way to reduce your dependence on the grocery store without breaking the bank. You can have a steady stream of fresh eggs from hens and butcher the roos for meat. But there are some downsides to raising chickens, like escaping, predators, and getting into your garden.

Meat rabbits are another good animal to have on the homestead. Rhonda at The Farmer’s Lamp has a great post about the ins and outs of meat rabbits. Having meat rabbits allows you to close gaps in your food security and they don’t take up much space. Since it’s hard to automate their care, they are more work than chickens. But once you get used to what they need, it should only take about 10-20 minutes in the morning and evening. We will be adding them to the homestead this fall when its a little cooler. The biggest downside of rabbits is the cuteness factor. Many people will struggle to butcher them because they are really cute.

Goats

Goats are cool critters for the homestead. Unfortunately, I don’t recommend them for beginners. I say this as a beginner who had no clue what was happening and we have paid a hefty price for not knowing what I was doing. The value of learning about them mixed with the milk they give, possible meat, and income from breeding make them a good creature to have when starting a homestead.

If You’re Ready to Start, Start Small

The biggest mistake new homesteaders make is trying to do too much at once.

I start by setting a few realistic, seasonal goals and building systems around them:
👉 50 Realistic Homestead Goals to Start With

What About Gardens?

You do not need a acre garden when you are starting out. Yes, I am currently reminding myself of this right now as I am looking at my garden space, which is almost a half acre. You don’t need a greenhouses or other large, expensive purchases. Start small. Grow your tomatoes and peppers to make your salsa. Plant herbs and keep them alive. Make sure whatever you are planting you have a plan for. If you do not like cucumbers, do not plant 20 plants just because you think you should. Once you have a handle on what your family needs and what your land can produce, then you can start growing the size of your garden.

Learn how to preserve your garden so that you can enjoy your harvests well past summer. If you don’t know how to can, you can check out our canning page or go to YouTube, Pinterest, and Google for amazing resources. Also make sure that you have good storage for your jars of food. There is nothing worse than spending tons of time canning just to have your plastic shelves fail. If you don’t want to can and have some money to burn, invest in a freeze dryer.

Finances

Starting a homestead with no money is just not feasible. Whether you decide to make homesteading your fulltime job or simply a way to live more independently, you need to make sure your finances are in order before you start. Our first year homesteading cost us over $20,000 between buying fencing, animals, lumber, and vet bills. So make sure you have the ability to cover those expenses.

Setting up your infrastructure so that you can reduce costs over time is extremely important to your long term finances.

Your Next Step

If you’re serious about starting a homestead, the first thing you need isn’t land or animals — it’s a plan that fits your life.

👉 How I Structure My Homestead Day (So Things Actually Get Done)

Remember….

When everything is all said and done, you have to remember that starting a homestead comes down to your goals and your ability. You are only limited by your resourcefulness and imagination. There are no rules to what you have to do to be a homesteader. You don’t have to have or know everything to start a homestead. A dream, drive, and determination are all you need to start a homestead. Don’t get hung up on the details.

I hope this helps you start on the path to starting your own homestead. Leave us a comment below on your thoughts of starting a homestead.

If you like the content I put out, feel free to buy us a coffee! It helps keep this site running, marketing and the goats in grain!

Buy me a coffee

If you liked this post feel free to like, share, and find us on social media.

How To Raise Meat Chickens

March 11, 2025 by Leigh Leave a Comment

Chicken is the meat that is most consumed by Americans. Beef is a close second. But for those of us that are trying to live a more self sustaining lifestyle, chicken is the most available and easiest to raise when it comes to meat animals. But how do we do it humanely? How do we make sure that the quality of chicken doesn’t stop at the meat? Instead making sure that the entire existence of that meat chicken is happy, healthy and most importantly humane? It’s not hard to raise meat chickens but, it does take some work.

The Ultimate Homesteader’s Starter Bundle – Only $47!

Get the tools you need to stay organized, track profits, and manage your homestead with ease!

Includes:
✅ Schedule F Tracker – Simplify tax prep
✅ Profit Calculator – Track earnings
✅ Hay Calculator – Plan livestock feed
✅ Garden Journal – Digital & printable
✅ Herd Health Tracker – Monitor animal care
✅ Simple Budget – Manage finances
✅ Backyard Homestead eBook – Essential tips

$99 value – now just $47! Start your homesteading journey today!

Buy Now

Warning Graphic Content*

Potential Trigger Warning: If you are not interested in raising chickens for meat, please do not read this post.

How To Raise Meat Chickens

To start, purchase chicks that are from a reputable hatchery. I’m not trying to throw shade on any specific ones, but we use McMurray Hatchery. We tried them because other homesteaders speak highly of them. Now, we do too. We have ordered multiple batches of chickens and ducks from McMurray and couldn’t be happier with them. Other than a few losses, which is to be expected from any hatchery, all of our chickens and ducks have grown up to be very healthy and productive birds.

If you decide you want to hatch and raise your own chicks or simply cull your roos, then the process is still all the same. We use this incubator from Tractor Supply and love it. We have about a 85% hatch rate with it. If you don’t know, that’s pretty solid numbers.

Brooding

Most links provided are going to be from Amazon or TSC. You can find more information about our affiliate links policy here.

Brooding is when you allow your chicks to grow until they have most of their wings (usually around 3 weeks) and then transition them out of the brooder. There’s a couple ways to do brood them. I have a whole post on brooding chickens inside here, but I don’t recommend it for a lot of birds. If you are raising up 10 or 15, sure. But brooding any more than that and you’ll have a loud, stinky house… and no one wants that I use Tractor Supply Co for most of our supply needs and usually get feed from our local feed mill.

If you brood your meat chickens inside, you need to make sure that you are brooding them in an area with good airflow, is safe from predators and self injury, and has plenty of heat. I would also make sure that you put a tarp or something down. This will really help during clean up!

We use our metal shed, converted into an chicken coop/ quarantine pen and it has worked out really well for us. In fact, this is what I would recommend if you are brooding more than a few chicks.

But no matter where you brood your chickens, the process and supplies are still the same. We use these light fixtures and red lights from tractor supply. They have worked amazing for us. Also make sure you use some sort of bedding. I prefer this bedding from TSC and we use it for all of our animals.

Confining Your Meat Chickens

When we raise meat chickens, we like to keep them confined as they get closer to butcher time. Until then, we allow them to free range with the rest of the flock. At night they get put into A frame tractors that Jared built. As the chickens get bigger, they will start to spend more time in the tractors. We actually made these tractors so that we could have them work through the rows of the gardens to help with weeds and bugs.

If free ranging your meat chickens isn’t possible, these fences from Premier 1 are really good. We got this solar charger because Premier 1 tends to run low on inventory occasionally. I also got 2 orders of this 12v battery to run the fence. We’ve had a fair amount of luck with this set up. We also have a 6ft copper pipe to work as a ground. For the most part, we do not put our poultry in netting. That will probably change next spring, but for now we like having them free range the property. We do use the netting for our pigs.

The Ultimate Homesteader’s Starter Bundle – Only $47!

Get the tools you need to stay organized, track profits, and manage your homestead with ease!

$99 value – now just $47! Start your homesteading journey today!

Buy Now

Which Breed of Chicks To Buy

This is a widely debated subject and to be honest, I don’t have an answer for you. I wrote a post about the best dual purpose chickens here. But at the end of the day, a meat chicken is going to be better for meat and a laying hen is going to be better for eggs.

When trying to figure out what breed of meat chickens you like, my suggestion would be to order a meat assortment from your hatchery. There are a couple of different birds that are specifically bred for quick growing meat. There are other breeds that grow a little slower but are a little bit healthier in terms of potential health problems. By getting a meat assortment from your hatchery, you can figure out which chickens you like the most.

We have ordered the Cornish X and we weren’t thrilled with it. It could be because we let them grow a little too much. Or let them free range a little too long. Either way, our next order was McMurrary’s Big Red Broiler and we really liked them. I rarely ate chicken when we had a freezer full of the CX, but we are almost out of the Red Broilers. They really are that good. We didn’t lose any to health problems that we know of.

If you are a farmer/ homesteader and looking for a way to track your income and expenses, I highly recommend our Schedule F Tracker! We have been using it for years and it is the easiest, fastest and best way that we have found to keep track of the money spent on the homestead.

Buy Now

Butchering Your Meat Chickens

The hardest day on any homestead is butchering day. While we are excited for the opportunity to fill our freezer, it can be heartbreaking to know how it happens. Some people don’t have a problem with butchering day. Other’s struggle with it. I’m the latter. No matter how many times we have butchered, it doesn’t get any easier.

Day Before Prep Work

There are a couple of things that we do before the butchering day that really helps us make the most of butchering day. The first and biggest thing that we do is to fast the chickens overnight. This helps make sure that their crop and other digestive organs are empty. It also helps us round up the chickens in the morning without stressing them out. We shake the bucket, and they come running. While this may seem like leading a lamb to slaughter, and it is, it also keeps everything low stress.

We also get all of our equipment ready the day before. From knives to kill cones, and the chicken pluckers. Radio/ bluetooth speakers are charged and ready to go. We’ve also got all of the hoses moved to where we are going to butcher and the tables are set up. Don’t forget to set up your scalder as well. We had a turkey frier set up and a long thermometer to make sure the temp stays around 140*. Finally, we fill all the coolers with ice. We’ve tried adding salt to some of the coolers to act as a brine but found that we didn’t like the meat nearly as much.

Finally, we get all the tractors moved up to the butchering area and set in the shade.

Are you getting overwhelmed in the garden? Stressed? Or just not enjoying the garden like you used to? Check out our garden prompts! We send out weekly emails that get you back in the garden and out of your head! Turn the garden back into a place of love and joy instead of frustration and headache!

Subscribe Now!

Day Of Processing

Once the scalder is at temperature and we are ready, we start working our way through the flock. After the bird has been killed and the head, feet, feathers and organs removed, we will put them in ice water to soak and allow the chicken’s body to go through the rigor mortis phases. Yes, gross, but this is how your chicken from the grocery store is handled as well.

We try to break down the chickens the same day we butcher, but we are usually exhausted. We break them down into 4 piece bags (4 breast or 4 quarters, etc). Then everything is vacuum sealed and thrown in the freezer. Sometimes we use these bags for whole chickens or these for smaller pieces. While we really like the vacuum seal bags, they do get very expensive, very fast. We will also freeze the head, feet and organs for dog food so that as much as possible is used.

Timing Your Meat Chickens

One of the things we have learned over the years is to time when you order and butcher your meat chickens. This may not seem very important, but let me tell you, it is probably the most important decision you could make that your future self will thank you for.

Most meat birds are ready between 8 and 16 weeks, depending on the breed. But you really need to think about what your weather is going to be like when they arrive and when it’s time to butcher. Trust me, this is an important factor that EVERYONE misses.

One year, we bought our birds in August and butchered in November. That was freaking miserable. We had to start a fire in our fire pit to warm up our hands as we went.

Another year, we bought our birds in February and butchered May/ June. We lost half our birds to the cold, despite having 4 heat lamps. Then come butchering day it was freaking HOT. Not to mention we were covered in yellow jackets and mosquitos.

We have found that our sweet spot is ordering in July to butcher in October. This has really been perfect for us. As the day progresses we can shed layers and we don’t have to worry as much about bugs. Not to mention that our ice lasts longer in the coolers, so we are able to leave our birds to soak overnight without worrying so much about getting them processed in time.

At the end of the day, you have to do what is right for your family, your farm and your checkbook.

If you like the content I put out, feel free to buy us a coffee! It helps keep this site running, marketing and the goats in grain!

Buy me a coffee

If you like this post, feel free to share it and follow us below on our social media accounts!

Spring To Do List For Homesteaders

February 18, 2025 by Leigh Leave a Comment

As winter comes to a close, homesteaders and farmers brace for the spring race. The sunshine lasts a little longer each day. Livestock is giving birth. Chicks are in the stores. Plants are ready to be put in the ground. All of this means that homesteaders have a spring to do list that is a mile long. But instead of being overwhelmed by it, we are going to eat an elephant one bite at a time.

The Ultimate Homesteader’s Starter Bundle – Only $47!

Get the tools you need to stay organized, track profits, and manage your homestead with ease!

$99 value – now just $47! Start your homesteading journey today!

Buy Now

The Spring To Do List

The goal of our spring to do list is prepping for summer, but also deal with all the things that come with spring itself. The reality is that we are just not going to be able to get to some things done once the garden is in full swing. That means that we have to get as much of this list marketed off. But what should YOUR list look like? Below is how we break down our spring to do list into categories.

Garden
Livestock
Poultry
Clean/ Organize

Everyone’s to do list for spring is different because every homestead is different. Some people focus on firewood during spring, others their garden is their only focus. But everyone can agree, spring is a busy time for any homestead.

The Ultimate Homesteader’s Starter Bundle – Only $47!

Get the tools you need to stay organized, track profits, and manage your homestead with ease!

$99 value – now just $47! Start your homesteading journey today!

Buy Now

Spring To Do List: Garden

For us, putting in the garden is the highest priority every year. The first summer we were on our property we couldn’t get a garden in. We just had so many other things going on that it just wasn’t feasible. Last year, we got our garden in, but even with the woven ground cover, there was a ton of weeds. Which is scary because what would it have looked like without it?

We are expanding our gardens this year to include a kitchen garden. The original garden was great and produced a surprising amount of food, but it just wasn’t was I expected. The tomatoes we had just didn’t wow us with big tomatoes or even a decent harvest. BUT we did grow tomatoes which is always awesome. This spring we will be installing our kitchen garden and turning the original garden into our “bulk” garden.

The biggest project for spring in the gardens (after installing the kitchen garden) is to get the pigs and chickens in the gardens and let them root, till, and poop in the gardens. We are hoping that will boost our harvests and keep down the weeds.

We are also going to be starting all of our own seedlings this year. Which is going to be intense and we will probably run out of room in the basement, but that’s ok. We built a greenhouse to hold all the seeds. To put that into prospective, we plan on starting at least 100 tomato plants. Yes, 100. That may seem like a lot, but we eat tomato sauce in some form at least once a week. Then there’s ketchup, BBQ sauce, sloppy joes, etc. We need a ton of tomatoes.

If you haven’t already, I suggest getting your seeds now. You can order online or you can stop by pretty much any big box store and get your seeds from them. Personally, I order my seeds from Territorial Seed Company and Baker Creek. I have also ordered from other sites but I prefer these two.

Spring To Do List: Livestock

Kidding season for the goats is pretty intense. Mainly because I am a nervous wreck. These girls are my favorite and I don’t want anything to happen to them. Plus, getting to see new favorite creatures born is amazing. But to prepare for it takes some effort. On my list is making sure that their birthing kits are ready and I have everything I need.

If anyone is interested, we filmed our most recent kidding. Be warned, it’s a goat giving birth so it’s pretty graphic. Bella gave us two beautiful babies; Mavrick and Goose. We will be retaining both of them and I’m so excited!

Spring To Do List: Poultry

Chickens, ducks and turkeys get their own category because we are placing a HUGE order this spring. We are talking 60 laying hens, 100 meat chickens and 15 turkeys. Why?

Spoiler alert There are cons to raising chickens…. Just so you know.

We have had a lot of issues free ranging the chickens. The chickens will wonder off or we can’t find their eggs. It’s been one thing after the other. My previous flock of 60 chickens and 25 ducks is now down to 16 chickens and 9 ducks. Though we did butcher 6 meat ducks. So I have to get the various brooders ready to go for them.

I’m going to do a blog post on why free ranging the chickens didn’t work for us and what we plan to do different this time. But the reality is that true free ranging has cost us a TON of money. Between the initial costs of buying the chicks and then having to rebuy plus the lost income of selling eggs and chicks? It’s sickening how much money was spent or lost. So we are working on some strategies to stop the bleed.

Because we are raising some chicken for friends and family, we are going to be raising 100 Freedom Rangers. We realized with our last batch of crosses that we just weren’t feeding them enough which led to them not gaining enough weight. That led to us having to wait to butcher them, making the meat tougher. This time we plan on moving them to a different area that is full of bugs, grass, and other yummy treats as well as feeding them all the feed they want.

The goal is to get all of this done before summer really kicks in but we will see what happens.

Finally, We Clean and Organize

This is another long spring to do list for our homestead. We have slowly but surely been working on getting the property cleaned up and things moved around. It’s been a long process. We usually wait until fall/ winter to start working on the outside because the weeds and grass will hide a lot of the debris. When all the grasses die back, we can find these things and get them in the pile for trash.

Come spring, it’s the final push to get the unusable stuff off the property. Also on our spring to do list is gutting the basement to allow us to get our food storage room built and the rest of the animal storage done. It’s a tall order.

Also, I am a terrible cleaner. I have ADD and I go through crazy, spastic cleaning urges and everything MUST BE CLEAN. And then I squirrel out or get too busy and the house cleaning falls apart. Every late winter/ early spring, I try to get as much of the house cleaned and organized. I know as soon as summer hits, I’m going to be in the garden.

These are just some of the things we are doing this spring on the homestead. I would love to hear about what you are doing!

If you like the content I put out, feel free to buy us a coffee! It helps keep this site running, marketing and the goats in grain!

Buy me a coffee

If you like this post, feel free to share it and follow us below on our social media accounts!

Infrastructure And Self Reliance

January 21, 2025 by Leigh Leave a Comment

When Jared and I sat down to go over our infrastructure for 2025; the projects, plans, and goals, we really wanted to get us to a place were the projects were done. That way we could focus our finances in other areas. Now, we all know that projects on the homestead are never truly done. But if we can get some of these bigger projects out of the way? We will be well on our way to self reliance and that is huge.

The Ultimate Homesteader’s Starter Bundle – Only $47!

Get the tools you need to stay organized, track profits, and manage your homestead with ease!

$99 value – now just $47! Start your homesteading journey today!

Buy Now

What Does Self Reliance Look Like To Us

The best way to set up goals is to ask yourself some questions. Like WHY do you want to be self reliant? What does self reliance look like to you? How are you going to become self reliant? These questions will have answers, but more often than not, they lead to more questions. But to give you our starting off point, we see self reliance as a way to decrease spending, reduce off farm hours, and create a eco-system here on the farm.

The more we become self reliant, the less we will spend at the feed and grocery store. The less money we spend at the grocery and feed store, the quicker we can pay off the farm and any debt we have. The quicker we pay off our debts, the more we can reduce off farm hours. If we can create an eco-system where our garden and land feed our livestock, and we can harvest our garden and livestock. Then we will be back to reducing our need for the feed and grocery store.

This symbiotic relationship with our land and livestock are paramount in not only becoming self reliant, but being good stewards to our land and shepherds to our herds.

If you are new to heating with firewood and are looking to master the finer points of it. We’ve got a great eBook that goes in depth of what tools you should consider, how and where to stack, how to build a fire and so much more!

Buy Now

Setting Up Our Infrastructure

As I’m sure you can tell, Self Reliance is the keyword for our lives for the next few years. It is the cornerstone of every single thing we are doing and planning. So we are starting the first year with infrastructure. I talked in depth about what infrastructure is in this blog post. But the point of that post was to get you to think about your own infrastructure and what that means for your homestead.

When it comes to our homestead, we are really trying to focus on self reliance. Keeping in mind that the 3 big dreams are spending less money, reducing off farm hours, and creating an eco-system are the most important things. We created our infrastructure list and plans around that.

The goal of the year is to set up the homestead with those three big dreams in mind. For example: we have made the hard decision that if we can’t sell our bucklings, they will become meat goats. We’ve also made the decision that we will no longer buy chickens because we like the way they look, or how many eggs they lay. All chickens will be a meat variety instead of dual purpose. The gardens are going to go be overhauled into a “bulk garden” and a “kitchen” garden. We are going to start working on water movement so that we are no longer laying hoses throughout the property to get water to animals and gardens.

Meat

Then there’s closing the holes in our food security. One of the things we decided was to focus on heritage breeds. While they take more time to mature, they are more efficient with what they eat. We recently purchased 2 American Guinea Hogs so that we can stop relying on other farms for our pork. We are also going to be purchasing several Bourbon Red turkeys to further reduce our dependance on the grocery store or other farms.

The caveat to these animals is that we are also only going to buy animals that can work as well. One of the things that we learned at the HOA conference in Virginia, was that the animals should work for you too. Pasture rotation is a thing we knew about, but when listening to the lectures, we learned about what pigs can do for revitalizing the soil.

Before we get too far into this, I have a great course on the basics of goat care. I call it Goat Crash Course: Goat 101. In this course, I explain things like types of shelter, types of feeds and hays, basic assessments and so much more! Check it out!

Buy Now

Gardens

Our gardens are going to look very different then they did last year. We are going to bring the pigs and chickens into our side yard and allow them to root, scratch and poop on that area and will turn it into another garden. That garden will hold all of our squash, cucumber, melon, herbs, etc. Then we will turn our old garden into the “bulk” garden for corn, tomatoes, peppers and food for the animals.

We are making lists of what we buy at the grocery store and of that, what can we grow? One of the things we can grow to spend less money growing cumin. We use a TON of cumin and at $20 a container, that’s a lot of money every year. It’s the same thing with lettuces. We feed our bearded dragons mustard, turnip, collard greens. At $4 a bag, and we by 4 bags a month? That’s a huge savings if we grow those things ourselves. Not to mention, that the pigs will eat the excess turnips.

If you are interested in learning more about my favorite garden planner. I highly recommend Seedtime! This planner has been instrumental in helping me plan out my gardens with WAY more efficiency than I could ever expect! It has also reduced overwhelm, stress, and calmed my ADD/ADHD!

More Info!

Animals

We already discussed the hogs, turkeys and chickens. But to go a little more in depth, every single animal on our homestead is going to have a purpose. And if they require additional feed that the farm can’t produce? That is something we need to look at or they aren’t going to stay long. This has led to some hard decisions when it comes to our personal animals.

We aren’t going to just get rid of them. But this thought process has shown us the amount of money spent on the dogs, cats, dragons and snakes for pleasure, hurts our bottom line of spending less. That means 1) no new animal will be brought to the homestead unless it serves a purpose and the farm can sustain it. And 2) has made us really look into how we can feed animals alternatively without affecting their health.

Another point with the animals is keeping around animals that are not producing. The animal lover in me struggles with the idea of just butchering an animal because it is no longer useful. But the homesteader in me says, but that’s their job. It’s very conflicting and confusing.

Buy Now

Permaculture And Self Reliance

This word has been rattling around my head for the better part of a month. One of the things we have been talking about pre-conference was that while we could afford our $600/mo feed bill, we didn’t want to. After the conference, we realized that we could grow most of the food our animals need without having to use as much feed. This lead us to the idea of permaculture.

The plan, and resulting infrastructure, is that we are going to use electric netting to rotate the pigs and chickens throughout the property. We’ve had a lot of predator problems with our chickens and we are hoping that by giving them a safe space, with electrified netting, this will keep the predators down. For the pigs, we are planning on giving them a large space to root and poop in hopes that they will break the soil and allow the good things to get into the soil.

After they have worked the soil in that area, we will move them to the next area and let them continue through the property. The area that they worked will be seeded with a variety of grasses, legumes, and other plants that will help the soil and feed the livestock.

While I love my compost, and we will always have and use it, the idea of schlepping wheelbarrows up hill and all over the property is not my idea of a good time. BUT I can take bedding waste, wasted hay, and other compostable-s and just put it in where the chickens are. They can spread it around and the soil can break it down there. I talked here about other uses for goat bedding and we are doing that as well.

Another part of permaculture is instead of ripping out gardens when they are done, we can put the pigs, chickens or goats in there and let them “rip out” the garden. This will reduce our work load, feed them, and put them to work. That seems like a win to me.

More Info!

Bringing Self Reliance Into The House

While at the HOA conference, we were told that the house is not as important as the land. I, wholeheartedly, disagree. While the personal how’s and why’s of that is not important, what is important is that having a safe, secure, and comfortable home, is just as important as the land. And yes, part of it is vanity on my end. While I don’t want the best of the best and need designer things. I do need my home to be safe, secure, and comfortable.

We have to update our electrical panel, breakers, and some wiring. We need to take down some trees that would absolutely demolish our home if they fell. Then there’s the fire safety aspect of putting in tile accents in front of the fire place. We have to paint the exterior of our home because cedar siding will be damaged if it is not taken care of property. Oh, and our back deck is about to fall of the house. So while yes, the land is important so is the house.

I understand what these other homesteaders were talking about in regards to making sure that the land is the priority. But at the same time, so is the home. I know that they don’t mean, “Don’t worry about the electrical panel! You need to put pasture rotation into effect first.” But at the same time, me being comfortable in my home is equally as important as the land. And to be honest, we can do both.

The Ultimate Homesteader’s Starter Bundle – Only $47!

Get the tools you need to stay organized, track profits, and manage your homestead with ease!

$99 value – now just $47! Start your homesteading journey today!

Buy Now

The Food Storage Room

One of the other ways we are going to work on our self reliance is to finish up our food storage room. While most will call this a pantry, it’s going to be much more than that. In this storage room, we will have all of our canned goods, garden harvests, coffees, etc. It will also have a dehumidifier and vents on a thermometer to help control the temperatures. It will be insulated and have a door to keep animals out. We will also be storing our crockpots, stock pots, and other larger kitchen appliances in there so that we can reduce the amount of space they take up in the kitchen.

So I will be working on making the house comfortable for my family, while Jared is out there cutting down trees and replacing the electrical panel. I may even help him paint the house.

The Ultimate Homesteader’s Starter Bundle – Only $47!

Get the tools you need to stay organized, track profits, and manage your homestead with ease!

$99 value – now just $47! Start your homesteading journey today!

Buy Now

What Is Your Self Reliance Infrastructure

At the end of the day, you have to do what is right for your family, your land and your animals. It’s not about them or me. It’s about you and what you are trying to accomplish with your life. I hope this post has opened your eyes to what you want to do with your homestead.

If you like the content I put out, feel free to buy us a coffee! It helps keep this site running, marketing and the goats in grain!

Buy me a coffee

If you like this post, feel free to share it and follow us below on our social media accounts!

How To Save Money On Livestock Feed

December 7, 2024 by Leigh Leave a Comment

Whether you homestead on a large scale or small, livestock feed is expensive. To be fair, raising livestock in general is expensive. But with the holidays on us, plus supply chain issues and inflation, saving money is becoming more and more important. These tips are how we save money on livestock feed.

How To Save Money On Livestock Feed

Just Add Water
Grow it
Microgreens or Sprouts- Another great way to stretch feed
Buy in bulk
Reduce animal numbers.

You could also make your own, but that is an entire post all on it’s own so make sure you subscribe below to be updated on that post!

Let’s talk about each one of these a little more in depth.

Buy Now

Just Add Water

Soaking feed is number one for a reason. It is hands down the easiest, cheapest and fastest way to stretch your feed. All you need is a 5 gallon bucket with a tight lid for each different feed you plan to soak. For example: I soak/ ferment pig, chicken and goat feed, plus alfalfa and beet pulp, which I do together. So I have 4 buckets.

What’s the difference between soaking and fermenting? Time. If you leave your feed for too long in a bucket it should ferment. And if you leave it too long past that, it will mold. We soak our pig feed and the alfalfa/beet pulp overnight. The chickens and goats get fermented feed that we start 2-3 days prior and then add more as we go.

PS: if you ferment your pig feed for too long, or if there is corn in the feed, you will have drunk pigs…. Don’t ask how I know.

The Hay Calculator:

If you aren’t math-y (don’t worry I’m not either), check out our Hay Calculator. It literally does ALL of the math for you and gives you totals based on what you want your goals.

On the second page, you can track where you’ve bought hay, what you spent and how long it lasted.

Buy the Hay Calculator

Grow It

Right now growing isn’t as easy because it’s winter. But growing crops for your animals is hands down the cheapest way to reduce feed costs. In fact, I would dare say that if you have enough property, or not a lot of animals, you could feasibly never buy a bag of feed. Between grasses for grazing, pasture rotation, and then expanding your garden to grow corn, barley, buckwheat, winter squashes, and more, you could never buy a bag of feed. This could save you thousands of dollars a year for just a few seed packets. You can get almost all of your seeds from Territorial Seed Company or Eden Brothers.

What kind of fodder crops should you grow for your animals? That really depends on what animals you have and what they can eat. But corn is a great plant that is easy-ish to grow, store and feed out. Another good plant is pumpkins, and our animals love it. Winter squashes are another really great veggie that does well despite most attempts to kill it. It’s very easy to store and will last a long time in proper conditions. Another good option is putting your animals in your gardens after harvest. They can get all the left over yummies in there and clear your garden at the same time.

Are you looking for garden journal prompts, but aren’t interested in a weekly email? Check out our 365 Garden Journal Prompts! This is an amazing, all in one, yearly product that you only pay for once.

Buy Now!

Microgreens/ Sprouts

This one can get very in depth and long winded. But to give you the highlights: take a tray, add soil (you don’t have to use soil), add microgreen seeds (densely packed), and then soak. With proper lighting and care you can grow fodder for your chickens and even pigs and goats. The 104 Homestead has a great post on sprouting barley. The Homesteading RD also has a great post on the different microgreens and the process of growing them. Just make sure that your animals can eat the greens. Rainbow Heirloom Seed Co. has some great seeds on Amazon.

What kind and how much to feed? Honestly, we are just starting out with our microgreens and there just isn’t that much information out there on feeding microgreens to livestock. But I will say this, we are growing greens that they can eat the plant or seed of. So if goats can eat broccoli we will feed them half a tray of broccoli microgreens and see what happens. I’ll post more when we know more or find more research of it.

Buy Now

Buy In Bulk

Buying bulk depends completely on two things; your ability to load/unload and your ability to store. When I talk about buying in bulk, I’m talking about half ton totes like these. We have neither the ability to unload or store, so buying in bulk isn’t really a good option for us per se. But we do get a discount on how many pounds of feed we buy at a time. At our feed store if we buy a total of 500# of feed, we get a discount on all of the feed. It doesn’t matter if it’s pig, chicken and goat. I can move and store 10 50# bags of feed, I cannot do that with a ton of pig, a ton of chicken and a ton of goat feed.

What do you need to load/unload and store? Dolly’s to start if you are planning to store in 55gal drums. But if you are buying those big 1 ton totes? You’ll need pallets, pallet jack, and probably a tractor to get it off the delivery truck. There are places that you can go and fill 55 gallon drums but you have to find them first.

Another caveat to this is to shop around. While I absolutely adore Tractor Supply, I cannot afford $25-30 for a 50# bag of chicken feed. Not when I can get a better quality for half the price at my feed store. So ask other homesteaders/farmers in your area where they go for feed.

The other thing that buying in bulk helps with is reducing the amount of feed bags laying around your garage….. Not that I have that problem.

Our herd health bundle helps you keep track of your herd’s health. Includes the goat assessment, herd check sheets AND Herd Health Tracker!

Buy Now

Reduce Your Animal Numbers

No one wants to talk about this, and for good reason. I don’t want to cull, sell or give away any of my animals. On our homestead we can’t keep around animals simply because they are cute. If an animal doesn’t have a purpose, they don’t stay on the farm. The best way to save money on feed is to not have so many animals to feed. It’s just the cold hard truth. If you are trying to reduce your spending, buying feed from the feed store isn’t going to reduce your spending.

If you are having trouble choosing who needs to go, ask your self this: who is the oldest? Who is the meanest? Who is the fattest? Who is the hardest to handle? This should start to help you narrow it down a bit. Again, while not ideal and it breaks my heart, I know who is on the chopping block if we ever get to that point.

Saving Money On Livestock Feed

There are a million different ways to feed your animals. But at the end of the day, feed is an expense that you need to be okay with. If you’re not, then you need to reconsider the amount and type of animals you are getting. Meat chickens require tons of feed but pigs can be maintained on kitchen scraps and good pasture. It’s all in how you want to raise your animals.

If you like the content I put out, feel free to buy us a coffee! It helps keep this site running, marketing and the goats in grain!

Buy me a coffee

If you like this post, feel free to share it and follow us below on our social media accounts!

How To Keep Livestock Warm In Winter

December 3, 2024 by Leigh Leave a Comment

As I write this post, it is 12/2/2024 and it is 75* outside. While we live in a pretty mild winter climate here in Georgia, we do have some pretty cool/ cold weather. We’re not talking about -50 temperatures here. But we, and our animals, are not used to severe winter weather. Instead, we have hot/humid summers. No matter where you live, when it comes to taking care of livestock in the winter, there are a lot of things that you can do to help keep livestock warm in winter.

Buy Now

Keeping Livestock Warm

There are a lot of different variables to consider before you just dump a load of pine shavings into their shelter and call it a day. You need to consider your climate, animals, and resources before you just start throwing options out there to see what sticks. If you live in an area that rains a lot but doesn’t get too cold, you may not need to worry so much about deep litter bedding and may need to focus more on where the shelter is located. If you live in a snow drift, maybe having a good barn or deep litter is the right way for you.

I’m going to go through all the considerations that you should consider before you pick a method. At the bottom of this post, I’ll go through all the different methods you can use to help keep your livestock warm in winter.

Climate

Where you live will ultimately depend on how much you have to do to keep livestock warm. If you live in the far north, you may need deep bedding, water bucket warmers, and draft free shelters. In the south, you can get away with a three sided shelter and hammer to break ice.

We live in the Northeast Georgia Mountains, basically the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. Our summers are hot and humid, but our winters are pretty mild. Occasionally, we get snow but more often than not we get ice storms. Our winters tend to be very wet, too. That being said, we don’t REALLY need to operate with a deep litter method but we do anyways. Mainly because I want the compost I get out of it…. And my animals are spoiled.

Animals

Something that you need to consider is that the vast majority of animals do not require all the things we think they do when it comes to keeping them warm. They have great winter coats that will keep them nice and toasty warm. I talked in depth about body condition of goats in this post, but I want to further that. If your animal has good body condition, a healthy coat, and good food? They don’t need coats, blankets, or other methods to keep them warm in the winter.

In fact, most livestock don’t really need anything until the temperatures are steadily below 40*. Of course this assumes that they have good body condition, aren’t sick, etc. The key here is shelter and body condition.

Resources

The resources you may need; barns/shelters, heated waterers, pine shavings, etc are really all going to depend on what methods you decide work for you and your animals. Because not one size will fit all when it comes to your herd.

Methods To Keep Livestock Warm

Before you go dump resources, let’s talk about some situations and options.

You live in Illinois. Your average winter is 36in of snow fall and 27*. If you have one goat, one pig and a couple of chickens. You are probably going to want to consider a barn and the deep litter method. But if you’ve got 5 pigs and a couple of chickens, you could feasibly just have a good layer of straw or pine shavings and a 3 sided shelter.

You live in Maine. Your average snow fall is about 20ish inches and temperature is roughly 3*. But you live on the coast and it’s windy. You probably need a barn if you only have a few animals. If you have multiple of the same species, you could get away with only having a three sided structure.

Why? Well, when you have multiple of the same species, they will cuddle together to stay warm. If you only have a few of each kind, they may not snuggle up and that can cause their body temperatures to drop.

Finally, you live in Georgia. Your average snow fall is 1in a year (if your lucky) and temperature is 40*. But it’s Georgia so you may end up in a freak hurricane, tornado and snow storm in the same week. You’ve got one of a couple different types of animals. You could get away with a dog igloo and some straw. Literally. It doesn’t matter if you have 100 animals. Get more dog igloos. It’ll be cheaper.

Things You Can Do To Keep Them Warm

Deep Litter– This is probably my favorite during the winter but most hated chore in the spring. With a deep litter method, you pretty much dump a new bag of pine shavings or straw on top of the old bedding. Some people will spot clean the urine and feces, but we don’t. As the shavings, feces and urine break down (compost), it will create more heat for the goats. This method works well for us because we don’t have to worry as much if a goat gets “left out” by the other goats. Unfortunately, come spring, this is a monster chore.

Heaters– I’m not a fan of heaters in a barn because of the fire hazard. BUT sometimes they are necessary. Whether it’s small kids, piglets, or a really cold night, you do what you gotta do. I really like this one. The fire hazard is greatly reduced. Another option is to have all of your animals together in a barn. They can have their own separate areas but the more animals together, the more heat they will all produce.

Feed– This is a big one for ruminants, but all mammals create heat by digesting food. That being said, during the summer we don’t keep food in the barn. In the winter, they get a full bag of hay every night. If they eat it, they stay warm. If they spill it? They still stay warm with the bedding. Our animals have pretty much unlimited access to food during winter. While that may seem counter productive, especially when feed may be hard to come by, it will help ensure they survive the winter.

The Hay Calculator:

If you aren’t math-y (don’t worry I’m not either), check out our Hay Calculator. It literally does ALL of the math for you and gives you totals based on what you want your goals.

On the second page, you can track where you’ve bought hay, what you spent and how long it lasted.

Buy the Hay Calculator

Drafts/ Wind– If you are putting them in a three sided shelter, make sure that the wind can’t get in. Since most winter winds come from the north, make sure to face the opening to the south. But make sure to check your area and see which direction the wind comes from.

For drafts, this is similar to the winds, but a little different. We want airflow in the barn but not so much that it creates cold spots that the animals have to heat up. The best way to do this is to have south opening “vents”. On our barn, we just cut the T1-11 so that top was open on the south side.

Reducing Moisture– Hypothermia is a thing. We learned in childhood that after a day of playing in the snow or rain, we needed to come inside, take off our wet clothes and get warmed up. Well, it’s similar with livestock, except they can’t take off their clothes. We want to keep moisture reduced as much as possible. To do this, we make sure roofs don’t leak, rain can’t come in, and the ground is dry. The deep litter method can come in here because you can add bedding to the areas that are wet to help absorb them.

Maintaining Good Body Condition– I cannot stress this enough! If you are growing animals for meat, or you’ve got pregnant or lactating animals, you HAVE TO maintain good body condition. If your animal does not have good body condition going into winter, they will not be able to stay warm. We almost lost Champ this past winter due to poor body condition AND being pregnant. Everything she ate went to keeping herself warm and her babies alive.

Thankfully, everyone pulled through (except two still born kids). This year we have been on top of their feed and body conditions and hopefully, this won’t be a problem. If you are raising meat animals, it’s the same thing, if they are not fed enough they will lose their conditioning and they will eat to stay warm vs eat to get to market weight.

Heading Into Winter

Winter is a time to sit back, relax and enjoy your bounty from the year. It’s also a time for planning for next year. There are chores to do, but as a whole winter is a resting season. If you can prepare now, before it’s too cold, you will find yourself and your animals will be able to rest as well.

If you like the content I put out, feel free to buy us a coffee! It helps keep this site running, marketing and the goats in grain!

Buy me a coffee

If you like this post, feel free to share it and follow us below on our social media accounts!

The Actual Cost of Raising Livestock

November 5, 2024 by Leigh Leave a Comment

Do you get “free” eggs or “free” milk? If you think it’s free, think again. Your chickens do not produce free eggs. Your goats do not produce free milk. And when you are drowning in eggs or milk, you may be tempted to just give it away. I wanted to breakdown the actual costs associated with common livestock before you get too far in debt trying to care for these creatures. So what is the actual cost of raising livestock?

Buy Now

Actual Cost Of Raising Livestock

There are many variables when it comes to the cost of raising livestock. You’ve got the initial investment of the animal, then the care and upkeep of that animal. Not to mention possible vet care, feed, fencing, and replacement animals. There is so much that goes into the care and keeping of livestock that anything that you get out of them puts you solidly in the red. It takes a long time and constant vigilance to make a profit when raising livestock.

The Animal

Initially, all animals have to be brought to the homestead. Rarely, though it does happen, is livestock left behind when old owners sell and new owners buy a piece of property. We were hoping that the previous owner’s Brahma would stick around, he didn’t. But that being said, we had to bring almost every single animal onto this property. How much did that cost us?

Our goats are our most expensive creature here. We have spent about $3,000 on the goats we bought. Bebe, Stella, Finnegan, and Sébastien are the only ones we haven’t paid for since they were born here. That also doesn’t count their registration fees. That gives an average of $375 per goat. But we paid way more than that for some of them.

The chickens are by far the cheapest animal on the homestead but still pretty expensive at about $5 each. Ducks were about $10 each. The more “exotic” or heritage breeds are obviously more expensive.

Containment

This comes in a couple of different forms but the most common is fencing and housing. We were lucky enough to get our fencing installed pre-inflation. The cost of the fencing alone has almost doubled, not to mention the T posts, clips or gates. Our cost was right at $1200 for the 3 goat pastures.

Our initial coop cost us about $500 and while I really liked it, we out grew it quickly. Now, we have a metal shed that houses our chickens and ducks for the night. That set us back another $500 but effectively quadrupled our square footage.

Our goat barn is another cost that is pretty high. I think we paid about $2200 in materials for it. Unfortunately, it’s not great and is going to need to be torn down and rebuilt not only at a better location, but also bigger because we have more goats now. The cost of rebuilding is estimated at $1500.

Feed/ Supplements

This is probably the most flexible of all the costs because you may not need to buy hays, grains, and other feeds. I talked in depth about how much hay a goat needs here. But something else to consider is that it’s very difficult for animals to get their nutritional needs 100% met with browse or forage alone.

The Hay Calculator:

If you aren’t math-y (don’t worry I’m not either), check out our Hay Calculator. It literally does ALL of the math for you and gives you totals based on what you want your goals.

On the second page, you can track where you’ve bought hay, what you spent and how long it lasted.

Buy the Hay Calculator

My feed bill is about $400-600/mo depending on the time of year and what they need. In the winter, they eat more grains and hay so the cost is closer to $600+. In the summers, I don’t have to feed as much because they have access to all the browse, forage and bugs that they could ever eat. The bucks have to stay in their pasture in the summers because they get a little too excited to see my girls. So I still have to hay them.

Supplements are another cost to consider into the actual cost of raising livestock. Goats need minerals. Chickens need extra calcium. During kidding season, I will go through a bulk pack of Tums in about a month. Then there’s the iodine, iron injections, B complexes and more. I spend about $500 every 6 months in supplements.

Vet Care/ Medications

Within the first 48 hours of having Oakley and Bailey, I had spent over $300 on them. They had gotten into mountain laurel and Bailey almost died. I also spend about $200 a year on fecals. I could do them myself but it’s easier and more time saving to have the vet do it. The vet comes out once or twice a year to do a herd health check and make sure that they are doing good. Getting 12 goats to the vet would be almost impossible. In 2021 we spent $3,000 in vet bills. In 2022, we are on par to spend $5,000. That includes the fecals, prescription medications, wormers, and other supplements.

Another thing to note when it comes to vet bills is that as you get more comfortable and confident in your care of livestock, the less you will spend in vet bills. That’s not to say that you won’t spend any money, but it does go down. We spent about $2,000 in 2023 and maybe $500 in 2024 for vet bills. Most of that is culling sickly animals and the other part of that is having a better understanding of what is happening with these animals and caring for them appropriately.

Miscellaneous Materials

I went pretty in depth in these posts about what to have on hand throughout the year.

What To Have On Hand During Kidding Season

What Do you Need to Care for Goats

How To Brood Chickens Inside

You can also check out this from Redfin article as well! “Whether you’re planning to raise chickens at home in Asheville, NC, Eugene, OR, or Burlington, VT, check out this Redfin article we were featured in on 5 Chicken Coop Ideas For A Thriving Flock“

But there is so much more.

Bedding runs us about $600 during the winter. In the summer, we just keep the barns mucked out and have them on dirt floors. But in the winters, it gets so raw and wet that it’s better for them to have some sort of bedding.

Buckets, troughs and other feeders: My initial investment was somewhere around $200 for these and I plan to have the ability to replace them every year or so, depending on if they, or the kids, wreck them.

Then we have things like hoof trimmers, syringes and needles, milk pails, glass jars for milk and cheese making supplies. We’re probably another $500 there.

So our total cost for 2022 for all of this was: about $12,000.

For 2023 we are on par to hit $20,000. The split between chickens and goats would be about $2,000 for chickens and about 18,000 for goats.

But What Do We Get Out Of It?

The Cost

The average cost of goat milk is $9/ quart in my area. Each girl gives me about a quart of milk a day so each one produces about $270/mo worth of milk. They didn’t give me any milk last year, so we’ll count the estimated $18,000. If they keep production at $270 x3 girls in milk, my milk will cost me $8,280. Yes, cost me. They don’t save me a dime. Unless we sell babies and even then, it won’t make up the $8,280.

Buy Now

The chicken eggs go for about $5/dozen in my area and I get about a dozen eggs every 2-3 days. So we’ll say 2.5 days for a dozen eggs. If they keep production up for the whole year, which they should since we have different ages on different laying schedules, they will cost me $1,280 a year. They also don’t make me a dime.

So Why Do We Keep Them?

Well, the goats help clear the land and that helps keep the predator population down. If the goats can keep the brush down, it allows us to see and take care of predators. They also provide compost for the gardens. Goats are also my form of therapy. I’ve been to counseling over the years and I’m just not a fan of talking my problems out with strangers. But give me a goat? All that stress melts away. AND they’re adorable.

Chickens are probably the best cost to advantage ratio. They eat all the spiders, grubs, termites, and other nasty things. They help turn the soil in the winter and the tomatoes love their compost. If they get too old or too mean, they go to freezer camp. Plus, they give us eggs.

Beyond all of that, the animals have taught all of us patience. They’ve taught us to care for things more than ourselves. The animals have also taught compassion for our food, whether it be milk, eggs, cheese or meat. The goats have shown the boys biology lessons that they never would have gotten in the city or in public school. They’ve taught us life skills that we never would have gotten without them. And most importantly they’ve taught us about death and how to cope with it.

And that is worth more than money.

If you like the content I put out, feel free to buy us a coffee! It helps keep this site running, marketing and the goats in grain!

Buy me a coffee

If you like this post, feel free to share it and follow us below on our social media accounts!

Homestead Infrastructure

November 2, 2024 by Leigh Leave a Comment

Over the last several weeks, Jared and I have been going through our budget and project list for 2023. We decided that this year, we were really going to focus on the infrastructure of the homestead. I knew we couldn’t be the only one, so I wanted to put together a post on homestead infrastructure and what it means.

The Ultimate Homesteader’s Starter Bundle – Only $47!

Get the tools you need to stay organized, track profits, and manage your homestead with ease!

$99 value – now just $47! Start your homesteading journey today!

Buy Now

Every homestead is different, so every infrastructure plan is going to be different. But I wanted to go through our list of homestead infrastructure with you so that you can get some ideas on what you want to do with your own homestead infrastructure and why. If you have your own ideas, please list them in the comments below!

What Is Homestead Infrastructure

The first thing we need to do is define infrastructure: “the basic physical and organizational structures and facilities (e.g. buildings, roads, power supplies) needed for the operation of a society or enterprise.”(Dictonary.com).

But what does that mean for a homestead? We aren’t necessarily operating as a society, community or enterprise. We are also not necessarily building roads, grids, or buildings on a large scale. But that doesn’t mean that the same idea doesn’t work.

When I talk about homestead infrastructure, I’m talking about barns, sheds, and other outbuildings. I’m also talking about fencing, pastures and gardens. It comes inside the house in the form of canning, storage, freezers, and energy efficiency. As your coming up with ideas on what your infrastructure will be, think about all the things in your local community.

Grocery stores= garden, fruit trees, canning

Milk, cheese, butter, eggs and meat= cows, pigs, goats, chickens

Roads= Trails or walk ways to barns, livestock pens, gardens, etc

Grids like water, electric, gas= wells, solar, firewood

Schools, community center, grocery store= home

By setting up your own infrastructure, you are going to prepare yourself, family and homestead for future success. Also remember, if you can’t do something like build a barn or put in an acre garden, that’s okay too. Just work on the things you can do.

Why Infrastructure Is Important

When you are setting up your homestead, it is incredibly easy to get overwhelmed with the things you want to do or think you should do. I wrote a couple blog posts about setting goals, mistakes we’ve made, and things we have learned, but the biggest take away is that you need to know what you want, and how to get there.

Infrastructure on your homestead is so easily overlooked because you think you’re doing it with every project you do. But if you really stop and think about it, are you actually setting up something that is going to last for years to come, or are you simply reacting to the things you think you should be doing?

For example:

We bought goats on an impulse. Then as we bought more goats and as winter was barreling down on us, we decided to build a goat barn. They say hindsight is 20/20, and they are right. That first barn kind of works but is also kind of a disaster. Does it keep them dry? Sorta. Does it keep them warm? Yes. Will it keep predators out? Uh, maybe?

The barn is built right in a rain run off area. When we built it, we had no idea. But now it’s becoming an issue with all the summer rains we have gotten. The entire thing has about 2 inches of muck building up the sides, there are leaks in the roof and the “ventilation” we thought was a great idea? Not so much.

That being said, the infrastructure we put in? Isn’t working. That’s okay-ish. It’s a learning experience. But it’s also expensive.

Had we planned our infrastructure better it would save us money, time and a ton of frustration. That’s why it’s so important. But the learning part? That’s important, too.

Setting Up Your Homestead Infrastructure

For the planners, this is the best step. If you’re a do-er, find yourself a planner. I say that because I am a planner and I have about a million lists floating around for different projects and plans. In fact, I have a “hard copy” of my Pinterest in a 3″ binder. Jared is a do-er. He has zero desire to plan and that is just fine.

Our list of infrastructure is five pages typed and while yours doesn’t have to be that long, it does need to be that thorough. What does it need to have on it? Check out the example below:

Project: Goat Barn

Dimensions or Specs: Current: 8×13, Increase to 12×16. Current “milking area” will turn into a weaning pen and new milk parlor and kidding space created. Door from inner barn to milking area to avoid having to haul goats outside to be milked. Inner barn area will be increase to 8×10 minimum. Storage area in kidding/milking area for milking supplies. Bedding racks to get them off the ground. Gutters to IBC’s to help with water.

Resources On Hand: current barn will be torn apart, bleached/cleaned and painted. Materials that are reusable will be reused.

Resources Needed: t1-11, studs, paint, new hardware, more roofing, plywood or similar for bedding racks, screws, concrete pavers to get wood off the ground and possibly gravel in barn and in dry lot that will be created around the barn

Plan of Action: Jared and I will build a couple new goat shacks so the girls can have a place to go for the days that their barn will be moved. Barn will be torn down, cleaned and painted. New area for barn will be cleared and leveled. Water run off trenches will be “installed” to divert water from barn. Pavers placed and walls built. Interior built and painted. Pavers for milking area. Gravel, if decided, will go into inner barn, weaning area and dry lot.

Estimated cost: $1000

Homestead Infrastructure Ideas

Below are just a few of the things on our infrastructure list and each one has it’s own Project Planning Worksheet in my binder

IBC’s for firewood and water
Fencing for new livestock
Meat animals
Fence in Upper Garden
Goat Barn

Firewood/wood lot
Energy Efficiency
Yard hydrants
Solar panels
Generator
Hay Barn

Outdoor kitchen/ butchering area
Erosion control
Food Storage Room
Well Bladder
Attic Gables

Before you get overwhelmed, remember, this is MY entire 2023 focus. Paralysis by analysis is a thing and you don’t need to get overwhelmed. Make a list and see what you can do. See what it’s going to take for you to do those things. Then get to work.

If you like the content I put out, feel free to buy us a coffee! It helps keep this site running, marketing and the goats in grain!

Buy me a coffee

If you like this post, feel free to share it and follow us below on our social media accounts!

Our Homestead Buying Guide

October 26, 2024 by Leigh Leave a Comment

I’ve been getting asked a lot, “Where do you buy x?” So I figured I would take the time to list out where we buy the stuff for our goats, chickens, canning, seeds, garden stuff, and other odds and ends that we have used and really like. This is a VERY link heavy post, so here is our affiliate disclosure again. It doesn’t cost you a penny, but it does help us here on the homestead. The other thing is that I am not going to push you to buy anything that we have not already bought, tested and liked/loved. You don’t need that and to be honest, that’s not who I am. Here is the Homestead Buying Guide.

The Ultimate Homesteader’s Starter Bundle – Only $47!

Get the tools you need to stay organized, track profits, and manage your homestead with ease!

$99 value – now just $47! Start your homesteading journey today!

Buy Now

PS: if you don’t have a Honey account and you shop online a ton, I highly suggest you download it. You can use my code here. They are great because it can automatically search for coupon codes and you earn cash back on purchases. I’ve earned $300 in the last year. It’s worth the minimal effort AND you can add items to your honey list which will tell you when prices have dropped or if it’s at the lowest price.

Livestock

Goats

You can read any of my posts involving my goats here.

Buy Now

We get most of our goat gear from Tractor Supply. Their prices can be higher than a local feed store on some things but cheaper on others. For example; my local feed store has alfalfa pellets for $17.99/ 50# bag. Tractor supply has theirs for $19.99 as of this writing.

Buckets– We get these for feed, water, and so many other things. They are really useful.

Troughs- We use two different kinds. This one is the one we hang on the fence at different points to give them feed, alfalfa, or whatever else. We use this one for portability or if we are hanging a temporary feeder in a kidding pen for them.

Balling Gun– This helps us get pills down into the goats without having to worry about getting bitten. Yes, that happens a lot.

Hoof Trimmers- We’ve bought two of these, and I’m a fan of this one. It just seems sturdier and I like it better. BUT this one from TSC is fine too. It’s not that I don’t like it per se, I just prefer the orange one. If you’ve got some money to spend, I would HIGHLY suggest the Hoof Boss. I’ve seen it used and it does a fantastic job. It is on our wish list of things to buy.

Meds- Now, I’m going to say this. We treat a lot of aliments on our homestead. But we also have an amazing vet that we can call any time… almost. But having a few meds on hand is going to save you a ton of heartache. Meds to get from a vet: Thiamine, Banamine and a good antibiotic. Things to have on hand that you can get from a feed store: Red Cell, Probiotics, Safeguard or Cydectin (or your choice of dewormer), electrolytes, Iron, B-complex, and Copper Wire Bolus. On the copper wire, make sure you get kids or adults based on what you have.

Chickens

You can read about how we brood chickens here. The list below are links to the items we have bought.

Incubator- We use this one and have had great success with it. The only thing I don’t like is the size. I wish it were bigger but beggar and choosers.

Brooder lights- We have used CHE’s like this one, but it can cause the chickens to attack other chickens. So a red light and housing is what you really need. We also use pine shavings for bedding for both the goats and the chickens.

Feed- When we have chicks, we start them on a medicated feed. This helps with cocci and other harmful organisms. Remember, you really only need a week or two worth of this feed. What we do is feed approximately 1#/ chick. If you have two chicks, you would need 2#, if you have 50 you need 50#. This is not perfect, it’s really a guess. When we do our meat chickens, we buy one bag of medicated chick start and than it’s regular chick feed after that.

Feeders/waterers- We use this feeder when they are little, and this one when they are bigger. However! If you’ve got some money to spend or you are only interested in buying one thing, this is the feeder you need. I love it! AND we can hang it, which really does decrease the mess. It also works fantastic with the ducklings.

When chicks are little, they need a ton of water, but they are also extremely messy. So finding one that isn’t going to make a mess but also be easy to fill has been difficult. This waterer is good, not great, but it will get the job done when they are little. As they get bigger, we use this one. We found that the metal ones did not hold up well at all. If you have a waterer you love, let me know in the comments.

House Supplies

Canning

Alright! I’ve been waiting to do this one!

Canners- This is my water bath canner and this is my pressure canner. I’ve got two of the presto pressure canners and I love them. One of these days, I am going to get this mack daddy. I can process 19 quarts a time. Which replaces BOTH of my other canners. The price tag is steep at around $500 but it’s got a life time warranty and it’s worth every penny.

Jars- All I’m going to say is this: when you think you have enough, double it. Then double it again. Here’s why. I have over a thousand jars. When I can, I can for an entire year. So when I am figuring out how many jars of tomato sauce I need for the year, it’s not a couple dozen. I can 104+ quart jars. When I can green beans, it’s not a couple pints. It’s 146+ quarts and 146+ pints. Same with corn. Soups and stews is another big ticket item in my house. We are talking 200 quarts and 200 pints-ish. Sometimes it’s more. That’s already 600 quart jars that I need. So while you may not need that many, be prepared that you will need more than you think.

Funnels- Yall, you will never, and I mean never have enough funnels. I love the metal funnels and I have at least 6 of them. Make sure to get wide mouth and regular!

Jar grabby things- Get a bunch of these too. You will lose them or the handles will break while you are mid canning.

Books- Canning cookbooks are some of the best investments that you can make. This book is hands down the best period. Buy it. She’s got a ton of amazing soups in there and they are divine. This is another really good one with some great recipes. If you are new to canning, I will recommend getting a Ball Book. There is a ton of great information in them. BUT after you get some experience, or after doing your own research, take it with a grain of salt. Some of the recipes are extremely convoluted and contradictory. Lastly, I’m not a Prepper, per se. BUT I do put up my own food because after the pandemic, I realized that relying on the grocery store isn’t a super smart idea. That being said, this book has some great recipes, ideas, and more for being self reliant.

Check back for more items as we find them and add them to the list!

If you like this post, feel free to share it and follow us below on our social media accounts!

What To Do With Those Feed Bags

October 1, 2024 by Leigh Leave a Comment

How many feed bags do you have laying around? Do you just throw them away? I’ve always been one to save dog food bags. I don’t know why. Probably the same reason so many people save shopping bags that they never, ever reuse. At least not at the rate they save them. But after cleaning up the basement for the 9 millionth time, and seeing a ton of bags, I decided enough was enough.

Buy Now

What To Do With Those Feed Bags?

But how many bags do you really need? Well, according to my brain, I need all of them. It’s ridiculous. I cannot throw them away. No matter how hard I argue with myself about the fact that I don’t need to save every single one, I end up rolling it up and stowing it in another feed bag. So I started brainstorming, searching and the list below is how we reuse feed bags.

Why I save them

I feel like they are really good bags. They are made to hold 50# of food or more! That means they can hold all sorts of things. Plus, let’s be real here, you put anything sharp in a regular trash bag, even the heavy duty ones, and you are blowing a hole in it. Now, all that trash is all over the place. Not cool.

Another reason I am in favor of saving these bags is because I’ve already paid for them. Think about it, I bought the feed but I’m going to throw away a perfectly good bag because it’s empty? Absolutely not. Couple that and the fact that things are getting more and more expensive? I have all the reasons I need to hold on to and reuse feed bags.

Ways To Reuse Feed Bags

Trash Bags– Seriously, these make the most amazing trash bags! I don’t know where you live but trash bags by me are $15 for an 80ct box. When I am going and decluttering, I will reuse feed bags before I even touch my regular trash bags.

Tote Bags- Kathy over at Beyond The Chicken Coop has a great tutorial for making tote bags! These are seriously adorable and I will be making some! I love that I can make different sizes based on what I need. Plus, I know that if I can make the seams strong, they will be strong because again, they hold 50# of feed!

Hay Feeders- Danielle At DIY Danielle, talks about some of the pros and cons of doing it this way. I have found that it works well, until it doesn’t. I love the portability of this style bag, I can nail it to a tree or hang it in the goat barn. But it’s still only going to last so long.

Organizer- Yes, you read that right. We will use these bags to put all of the same type of stuff together. For example: We will store all of our nursery pots in a feed bag. Or if we are going the the back of the property to cut trees, we will put the bar oil, fuel, hatchet, etc in the bag. Now, we take them out immediately after so that we aren’t mixing chemicals if one should mysteriously open. BUT to get all those tools out to the area we are working now only takes one trip.

Planters- We have grown some amazing potatoes, carrots, and onions in these bags. But be sure to use the plastic ones for this! Patrick and Jessie at Southern Dreams Homestead has a great and in depth post about growing in containers that will help you here.

Tarps- Yea, I wasn’t sure about this one but the idea is definitely there! Sweet Meadow Sampler has a great tutorial on it. We will be trying it soon though.

Flooring– I personally would do this in the winter to make clean out in the spring easier. One of the biggest headaches we have come spring, has nothing to do with the garden. It’s cleaning out the barn and coop. Having these bags would not only insulate them from the ground, it would also help clean up all the pine shavings, poop, urine and more.

Compost- it is feasible that you could compost in these bags. The plastic would trap heat and allow break down faster. The thick paper bags are compositable themselves. In theory (I have not tried this yet) you could fill a bag and empty it in your compost pile. Or you could use the bag AS your compost pile. You can go more in depth about composting with The Homestead RD, Katie has some truly amazing posts about compost. In the post I linked above, she also uses feed bags as planters and can tell you how to do it.

Weed Suppression– We have used the paper feed bags to line the bottoms of our raised beds. It works about the same as using cardboard but it is FAR more readily available for us. I don’t know that I would use the plastic ones through.

Wood- We will put our small pieces of scrap wood in these bags to help keep the basement cleaned up. We have a ton of projects around here and I’m not going to throw away or burn a piece of good wood just because it’s a smidge too small. By putting it in the feed bags, we reduce clutter and reuse the bag.

Projects– Sometimes when we have multiple projects going on, it’s hard to keep everything separated. So I will put all the supplies for a project in a feed bag and then write on the front what it’s for. This has helped a ton when it comes to organization.

If you like the content I put out, feel free to buy us a coffee! It helps keep this site running, marketing and the goats in grain!

Buy me a coffee

If you like this post, feel free to share it and follow us below on our social media accounts!

Chickens

Starting A Homestead

Understanding Why You Want To Start A Homestead

Let’s Start With Animals

Chickens

Goats

What About Gardens?

Finances

Remember….

If you like the content I put out, feel free to buy us a coffee! It helps keep this site running, marketing and the goats in grain!

****Warning Graphic Content*****

How To Raise Meat Chickens

Brooding

Confining Your Meat Chickens

Which Breed of Chicks To Buy

Butchering Your Meat Chickens

Day Before Prep Work

Day Of Processing

Timing Your Meat Chickens

If you like the content I put out, feel free to buy us a coffee! It helps keep this site running, marketing and the goats in grain!

The Spring To Do List

Spring To Do List: Garden

Spring To Do List: Livestock

Spring To Do List: Poultry

****Spoiler alert**** There are cons to raising chickens…. Just so you know.

Finally, We Clean and Organize

If you like the content I put out, feel free to buy us a coffee! It helps keep this site running, marketing and the goats in grain!

What Does Self Reliance Look Like To Us

Setting Up Our Infrastructure

Meat

Gardens

Animals

Permaculture And Self Reliance

Bringing Self Reliance Into The House

The Food Storage Room

What Is Your Self Reliance Infrastructure

If you like the content I put out, feel free to buy us a coffee! It helps keep this site running, marketing and the goats in grain!

How To Save Money On Livestock Feed

Just Add Water

The Hay Calculator:

Grow It

Microgreens/ Sprouts

Buy In Bulk

Reduce Your Animal Numbers

Saving Money On Livestock Feed

If you like the content I put out, feel free to buy us a coffee! It helps keep this site running, marketing and the goats in grain!

Keeping Livestock Warm

Climate

Animals

Resources

Methods To Keep Livestock Warm

Things You Can Do To Keep Them Warm

The Hay Calculator:

Heading Into Winter

If you like the content I put out, feel free to buy us a coffee! It helps keep this site running, marketing and the goats in grain!

Actual Cost Of Raising Livestock

The Animal

Containment

Feed/ Supplements

The Hay Calculator:

Vet Care/ Medications

Miscellaneous Materials

But What Do We Get Out Of It?

The Cost

So Why Do We Keep Them?

If you like the content I put out, feel free to buy us a coffee! It helps keep this site running, marketing and the goats in grain!

What Is Homestead Infrastructure

Why Infrastructure Is Important

For example:

Setting Up Your Homestead Infrastructure

Project: Goat Barn

Homestead Infrastructure Ideas

If you like the content I put out, feel free to buy us a coffee! It helps keep this site running, marketing and the goats in grain!

Livestock

Goats

Chickens

House Supplies

Canning

What To Do With Those Feed Bags?

Why I save them

Warning Graphic Content*

Spoiler alert There are cons to raising chickens…. Just so you know.