My husband and I are currently thinking of using some of the  the stimulus money that will be issued to become a little more self sufficient by purchasing some chickens and other livestock .  We do live on a farm but both work full time outside the home.  We've had chickens before and some turkeys but never a cow or pig and really don't know that much about them.  Would like any info - pro or con- regarding buying/ tending farm animals.  Thanks

Chickens and rabbits are best source of homestead food. The chickens eat all our stuff we used to compost and don't require alot a babysitting. They provide eggs, and when their egg laying production drops off at about 1 1/2 yrs you can butcher them and either can them or pressure cook them.You can sell any extra eggs you have.

 Rabbits have the best turnaround value, all you need is a large breed doe and a buck, and they only take 30 days gestation, and 8 weeks of growth before putting them in the freezer or on the table. My large breed doe has 9 - 12 offspring at a time, about 3 times a year at the most. (We only breed in warm weather months) These too, don't require alot of babysitting.

If you are looking at whether or not economically livestock is worth it, it's hard to put a price on it. Somedays I think it would be easier and cheaper to get stuff at the grocery store. Then other days I'm very thankful for what I have.

Cinnamon, do you take your small livestock--chickens and rabbits--to a slughterhouse?  I have suggested to my husband that we get chickens for eggs (he eats a lot of them), and that we can always eat the chickens too, but he says no one would slaughter just a few chickens for us and that he had no interest in gutting and plucking a chicken for dinner unless times were desparate.  But, other than that, raising chickens is not a problem for us; most everyone around us has some anyways, and the year the neighbors guinea hens lived in our yard, we didn't have a single tick on us! 

Dh or my sons butcher them. They hunt so they're comfortable with it. My oldest can do chickens and rabbits by himself and has shown others how to do it.

I do know people that trade services to another family so they'll butcher their chickens for them. Most meat markets that process venison will do most any animal, but it's VERY expensive. A young goat is $100 to dress out, debone and wrap. We said no thanks, we'll do it ourselves.

Wow.  I think our local meat plant advertises $30 for deer. 

the extra cost is for deboning and grinding. The base cost is $50.

A pig used to cost $30, when we'd take one that was killed, skinned, gutted, and halved. The OP will pay big bucks to pay to have their livestock killed and gutted. A meat plant that does killing charged $1500 to process 4 steers from start to finshed product. Our friends sold most of the meat so they came out ahead.

I have no idea what a deer cost to do; we've always done our own. We had just checked the cost of doing the goats last summer because we were too busy at the time. So they stayed on the hoof several months longer until we had the time.

we have chickens, pigs, cows, and goats, rabbit and bees..

we barter with our butcher for him to process our animals 

we sell some chickens and Rabbit through his shoppe and he sells our honey .

Hi,  Sounds like you may be able to answer some questions for me.  What kind of housing do you need for pigs.  Chickens  won't be much of a problem, but a pen for the pig may be costly.    How much tending do they require (we both work full time outside the home). Rabbits we've raised in the past and have hutches for them.  Thanks for any info you can provide. 

Just a note to all of you who have responded.  Thanks so much for the information you provided.  I just hope this idea isn't more trouble than its worth!!!

Since my husband likes eggs, and the price of them keeps going up, I just suggested to him (again) that maybe we should get some chickens just for eggs.  I figure they would live pretty well out in the horse pasture, eating all the bugs the horse attracts. 

Besides a shallow pan of water and maybe some feed if they don't seem to be feeding themselves enough (did I mention the horse attracts a lot of bugs???), what else do you need to know to keep a grown chicken?  They sell some that are almost mature at the local flea market, so I don't need to worry about having chicks. 

We have trees in our pasture, one of which--a cedar--they can roost in (I know that has historically been a good chicken-roost).  The fence is electric rope, one strand of which is low to keep dogs out.  I would assume it would keep the chickens in too, so they should be safe.  Everyone else around us seems to have free-roaming chickens, so I can't tell if anything more than water and maybe feed would be needed (at least in the summer; I know we'd have to have somewhere warm for them to go in winter).