Hard vs. "Easy" Animals For Your Farm/Homestead.

Are you ready to start your farm or homestead and bring animals onto your farm? It can be excited but also scary to bring home your first farm animals. What should you start with? What is the easiest animals to care for and get something from to support your family? Honestly, I don't think that there are any easy animals . They all require work and effort on your part. It is just in how each one of us determines what is hard and what is easy for us to do on our own land.

It also helps to have quality animals. If you are breeding animals you will breed for a better animals and not the weakest unhealthiest animal. That is just common sense. But starting off with good animals will make things a little easier.

We have had experience with layer chickens, meat chickens, goats, beef cows, dairy cows, feeder pigs, and rabbits. For us so far the rabbits have been the most profitable but they take so much work to take care of them.

Chickens. Most people will probably say that egg layer chickens are the easiest. I would agree with this. Build a secure coop with enough room for them and give them the correct food and they will give you good eggs. As long as you get your chickens from a reliable source and they are healthy. Raising them from chicks is a little bit more time consuming and work. They will need a brooder and heat lamp or something to keep them warm. Fresh eggs are worth it in our opinion but it is cheaper to just buy eggs from the store. However, this is not about the price it is about the quality of food you are putting into your body.

Cows. They are relatively easy if you have good stock and the space for pasture. Most small homesteaders do not have the space for cows (they eat a lot). There are some mini breeds that you could look into if you really want your own beef or milk and if you do not have enough space for a regular size cattle.

Pigs. We have never bred pigs (yet...) but we get feeder pigs and they are pretty easy. They smell so put your pen for them far enough away from your house but close enough that it is not an extreme chore to go feed and water them twice a day.

Meat Chickens. I think that the hardest part about meat chickens is when they die randomly. We did Cornish Cross for our first meat chickens and over half of them died (the Cornish Cross bird is not a very healthy bird). Now we do Freedom Rangers and we like them a lot better and we've only lost a few here and there. The Freedom Rangers are a healthier bird but they take a few more weeks to get big enough then the Cornish Cross.

Goats. Meat or dairy we have them both. If you know nothing about goats I would advice you to do tons of research and find a mentor before you get into goats. When we started goats we had so much to learn and we kind of feel bad for the first goats we had as they were our trials goats and we learned on them. Goats are not easy.

Rabbits. These cute fluffy bunnies take a lot of work to raise. The cost to raise them may not be extremely high but the amount of time it takes to care for them correctly is a lot. We raise meat rabbits (rabbit meat is delicious) and also sell some to others for them to start breeding for themselves or for pets.

Basically with any animals if you get good quality stock you will have less problems. If you know how to take care of them and provide them with the food, minerals, and a safe place to live you will have less problems. We do not know everything about each of our different types of animals. There will still be things that come up that we have to research and keep learning how best to take care of our farm animals.