When we decided to stay home and farm, in case the economy melted down, we were thinking about sustainable agriculture. Agricultural systems can be sustainable to varying degrees, but our idea was to see if we could produce nearly everything we needed on our own small farm. It is not possible to produce everything we want, but we were curious to discover whether everything we need (water, food, shelter) might be obtainable in a sustainable agricultural system on only 8.7 acres. In order to have a sustainable agriculture system, it is necessary to keep animals of some kind to provide fertilizer. Even if a person were a vegetarian, he or she would have to choose an animal to provide organic matter for soil improvement. We chose horses originally, because we just happened to have some and because their manure is good for the garden. Horses are my favorite animals, but they present a problem for sustainable systems. In order for the system to be sustainable, some animals must be in production. The offspring of those animals that are not kept for breeding must be either sold or slaughtered to avoid overpopulation. Horses are numerous, inexpensive to buy, expensive to feed, and hard on fencing. They are not considered a slaughter animal in the U.S. Producing more horses that cost a lot to feed and bring very low prices is not sustainable, but keeping the few pensioners we have left is important to production on our farm. Chickens are important to sustainable systems too. They are the most consumed animal on earth and they are the least expensive to buy. They are the most economical and the easiest animal to keep. Without chickens, the survival of most of the world’s human population is questionable. In addition to producing eggs and meat, if they are allowed to range, they are a natural pest control force to be reckoned with. Chickens love grasshoppers and grasshoppers are a plague to gardeners. Chicken manure is excellent fertilizer, but our birds would have to be kept in pens in order to provide enough manure to improve garden soil. For some farmers on small parcels of land, this might be the best choice. For our situation, it is more effective to let the chickens range. When we were trying to choose an animal for meat and milk production, we decided on goats. Cows may be easier to keep healthy, but goats are smaller, less dangerous, more companionable, and they don’t kick. Since we have a small child here who wanted to help with milking, we decided that goats were the best option. Goats really don’t eat much less than cows. It costs nearly as much to feed goats as it does to feed cows. For a farmer with large pastures, cows would probably be the better choice for milk production. Goat’s milk is naturally homogenized. In order to obtain cream for butter and ice cream, it must either sit in the refrigerator for several days, or it must be separated with a machine called a cream separator. Cow’s milk separates spontaneously, very quickly after milking, providing plenty of cream for making goodies. Some cows can give as much as 25 gallons of milk per day. Goats give a gallon to a gallon and half per day, although we have one that gives nearly two gallons per milking. Eventually, we will probably buy a milk cow. Twenty years ago, when my husband and I had purchased the farm, he asked me what sort of farm I thought we should build. I told him then that I would like to breed pigs. Pigs are admirable animals. They have no match among large slaughter animals in their value to a small farmer. Pigs can grow to weigh 600 pounds. They may even grow larger than that, if some of the stories we’ve heard are true. Some people say pigs can grow to be upwards of 900 pounds, nearly the weight of a full-grown steer. They have a 4:1 meat to bone ratio, meaning they carry more meat in their poundage than other slaughter animals do. One sow can produce as many as 22 piglets in one farrowing. My old sow, Miss Piggy, our first pig, once farrowed 22 small piglets. Each of these piglets can get right up and run around within minutes of birth. In eight weeks, they can weigh in at 20 to 25 pounds. My current sire, Wilbur, weighed 45 pounds at 8 weeks. Within 4 months, the young pigs are big enough for a Hawaiian style barbeque and within 6 to 8 months, with proper care and feeding, they can be sold at auction at finish weight. A farmer with a family of 5 who raises pigs, can hold out two or three pigs to process when they are finished out, and sell anywhere from 8 to 20+ piglets from each sow twice a year. The pigs he keeps will feed his family well for the whole year. The dollar return on the investment of his time and feeding of pigs far exceeds any possible return for the sale of other livestock animals. Our sows were bred in June and July. In a few months, they will farrow in their new hog shed. At that point, we will stay with them, watching for the event in order to protect the piglets from crushing. Mother pigs come in two personality types, crushers and nurturers. Crushers will produce a large number of piglets and let them nurse, then run around crushing the piglets one after another until they have reduced their offspring to what they must figure is a more manageable number. Even wild pigs exhibit this behavior. Crushing is abhorrent to humans, but in pigs it is one evolutionary strategy. The piglets they raise have a better shot at survival because they get more milk than they would if they had to share it with other piglets. The mother expends less energy to raise stronger piglets if she crushes some of her young. Nurturers don’t intentionally crush their offspring. They may lie down on a weak piglet accidentally, or step on one or two, but they don’t run about deliberately crushing them until they have only 4 or 5 piglets left. Nurturer’s babies will be smaller, not as strong, but more numerous, and the nurturer mother will also have a good chance that some of her babies will survive. We intend to prevent crushing and if the mothers don’t have enough milk, we can supplement the piglets with goat’s milk in baby bottles to keep them growing at their normal rate. Goat’s milk is wonderful to supplement other livestock. Cows, horses, pigs, puppies, kittens, even human babies do better on goat’s milk than cow’s milk. It is much easier on the digestive tract. We will have several goat does giving milk at that time, so there will be no shortage of goat’s milk for baby pigs. Our other favorite among the livestock are turkeys. We all really love turkeys. They fit right into sustainable agriculture if a farmer gets the right kind. Heritage turkeys reproduce on their own and they are plenty big enough, though they don’t reach the extreme weights that Bronze and White Turkeys may. Usually those breeds are slaughtered before they do achieve those weights anyway. One turkey can make several meals for our family. We consider them to be a critical part of our farming venture. Commercial turkeys are killed at only a few months old, but we keep ours until they are needed for food. They are not like chickens that get tough as they age so there is no rush. Fresh turkey tastes a little different than the Thanksgiving turkeys sold at grocery stores. It has more flavor and a slightly different texture. The white meat is never dry. If we wanted our turkeys to taste like store bought, we could freeze them, but we really don’t care for frozen meats. Refrigeration requires energy and that involves cost. Even if we did not prefer fresh meat, we would opt for fresh turkey. We keep our meat on the hoof, in order to avoid filling and plugging in the deep freeze. A deep freeze is only cost effective for preserving a whole steer. The poultry food can all be grown right on the farm. Corn, oats, and meal worms make an excellent diet for poultry. Our turkeys had to have their own pen because they are susceptible to a pox that chickens get. Chickens recover from it, but turkeys die of it to the last bird. To prevent the turkeys from potentially contracting a deadly illness, we put them in a small yard behind the goat pen. The young ones can fly to some extent and have gotten out repeatedly. Once they are larger, turkeys don’t fly at all and they are no trouble to keep up. Turkey Lurkey is older and she does not fly. She is a big Bronze hen and so friendly, she is part of my daughter’s petting zoo. On the night we killed the last bird slated for dinner out of that turkey order, my daughter had instructed me to keep Turkey Lurkey and kill the other one for dinner. I neglected to mention it to my husband and I went outside to make sure he got the right one (not that there was a sure way to tell between the two of them, but Aurielle could tell them apart). He explained that he had already dispatched the bird and he was furious that I hadn’t specified before hand. Aurielle loves a turkey dinner, but she was beside herself, crying and she ran to the turkey pen. The sun had gone down and she couldn’t discern which turkey it was, but she was so sure he had gotten Turkey Lurkey, she was having a fit. We had a somber meal and Aurielle ate, of course, but she was sad the whole time. When the sun rose the next morning, there was Turkey Lurkey, still in her pen. My daughter then complained about not having been able to enjoy her turkey dinner as much as she would have if she had known that it was not friendly old Turkey Lurkey. Farming livestock, it is always easy to get attached to some animals and some of them become furniture, always there. To my mind, it is really important that we are attached to all of our animals, and especially the ones we plan to eat. They should receive our attention and affection to make their lives happier while they are living. I’ve spent years refusing to keep slaughter animals because I would always rather save lives than take them, but it is a self-deception to think that we do not cause animals to be slaughtered if we eat meat. All of those animals that fill the meat section in the grocery store once lived. The difference is that those animals may never have had decent lives with keepers who cared whether they were hungry or thirsty or clean, and perhaps they have been dead for a lot longer than the date on the package would indicate. 
There are times when we are tempted to lock the chickens in the chicken house. Chickens will scratch young plants out of the beds as they come up. They love loose soil to scratch for worms and insects. For this reason, we keep a constant vigil in the garden until the plants are larger, but we spend a lot of our time in the garden anyway. Fortunately, chickens sleep at night. Ducks do not. Ducks will tear up greens, broccoli leaves, turnip greens, spinach, and other dark green leafy vegetables overnight. They can wreak havoc on a beautiful garden in just a few hours. It is necessary to fence the garden in, or to fence the ducks in a pen. Our ducks live in the front yard with the mini horse.
I understood already that goats are challenging to raise. They are ruminants and have very delicate systems. They must be well fed in order to be kept free of damaging parasites. Goats die of anemia very easily when the winter has reduced the nutritive value of pasture and the warm weather stimulates parasites to become more active. Early spring and early fall are the most dangerous times for goats because the winter and summer cause the pastures to be sparse. Without good quality hay, alfalfa, and grain, goats fall victim to anemia in large numbers and whole herds have been known to die off within a few days.
It costs less to feed a pig than it does a medium sized hound. While many corporate hog producers feed their pigs a diet mainly consisting of corn, pigs are omnivores and should have a choice of other fresh food items that can be grown in the garden in abundance. Greens, squash, carrots, potatoes, and especially turnips are very good food for pigs. Turnips are known to give the meat a wonderful flavor. With most livestock, the better quality the food, the healthier the animal, and pigs are no exception. Pigs can be fed old fruits and vegetables, but it is easier and less expensive to grow those vegetables in abundance than it is to obtain rotten ones, with fuel prices rising again.
