Are these Seven Livestock Breeds Suitable for Your Smallholding?

Ease of care, cost of nutrition, housing and finally usage are just some of the factors which affect the suitability of various  livestock breeds on smallholdings.

Here are some of the pros and cons of different species.

Horses

Horses and ponies are among the most expensive and complicated livestock breeds to house properly – on any size property.

To be kept in good condition horses need daily care, in the form of grooming and hoof cleaning at the very least. They also need proper housing, in the form of a stable, with decent bedding and fresh water supplied. That’s because horses left out in paddocks at night are very likely to be stolen.

They also need regular exercise, preferably more than three or four times a week, otherwise they become difficult to handle.

Horses are the one species of herbivore that can happily spend their entire day grazing. Gary Player’s father gave his son sound advice when Player junior embarked on his secondary career as a racehorse breeder: “Don’t keep anything that eats while you sleep,” was the father’s advice.

However few horses you keep on a smallholding, in time your grazing will be utterly denuded and you will be left with dusty paddocks.

In terms of grazing usage they are the ultimate large stock unit (LSU).

Buying a pony for a kid can be a costly mistake

Plus, don’t be tempted to buy your child a pony or a horse unless the kid has proper riding lessons. Very few of us become competent horsemen or women without proper tuition.

Keeping a horse, or horses on your property therefore implies a competent riding instructor must come to your property once or twice a week to conduct formal lessons. This at least implies the child has the time in its daily schedule for riding lessons. Also, if the child is young, that there is a competent adult available to help with saddling up the horse, and dealing with the fallout of any injury or mishap that may occur.

Or you must take the horse and child to a riding school for regular lessons. This implies either loading it into a horsebox or riding it to the school for lessons.

Another factor against keeping horses on your plot is the availability of suitable space for outrides in your area. Moreover, are there suitably like-minded riders on other plots, there being safety in numbers when riding out.

Horses are also social beings. They thrive on interaction with other horses, so keeping one alone is the equine equivalent of being marooned alone on a desert island: pretty soon the horse will develop all sorts of mental symptoms of loneliness. These could manifest themselves in violent behaviour.

So, unless you or members of your family are active and competent equestrians this is one species to avoid.

Donkeys

Given that there is a chronic shortage of donkeys in Africa generally (and South Africa is no exception) as they are killed for their skins, you would be doing rural dwellers a favour if you kept donkeys for breeding.

But, much the same observations on keeping horses applies to donkeys. Although smaller than horses, they, too, require daily care, night-time housing, and proper feeding and veterinary attention. They are also highly social animals and will pine away and become bad tempered and difficult to handle of not kept in, at least, pairs.

Dairy cattle

If equines require daily care, cows in milk require even more. At least twice a day, regularly as clockwork, they must be milked. Failure to do so will result on painful conditions of the udder such as mastitis.

Moreover, before deciding to keep a dairy cow have a plan in place for the daily disposal of her milk.

A good high-volume cow in milk can easily produce 20 or more litres a day. So unless you sell what you don’t use to neighbours you will need to find the time to process it into other dairy products, such as yoghurt, butter or cheese.

Dairy cattle are, therefore, high on the scale of livestock unsuitability for smallholdings, unless you have the time to devote to them and their production.

Moreover, if you really want cows as your chosen livestock breed, go for a small type, such as a Dexter, or Jersey.

Beef cattle

Many smallholders find it works to buy a few young males at calf stage, with the view simply to rearing them to slaughter weight.

Once they are deemed large enough they are dispatched to a nearby abattoir which will return in exchange neatly butchered meat, hopefully is freezer-ready packaging.

But again, everything that applies to horses and dairy cattle applies to beef cattle, in terms of housing, feed, medication and grazing.

Unlike horses, cattle are also notoriously destructive of fences, particularly if they are quite flimsy wire works.

Sheep

Although they require secure housing at night, and properly fenced camps, sheep are among the easiest of livestock breeds for a part-time farmer. They will get most of their nutrition from good grazing. Additionally, with a salt lick and water in their housing they will quickly learn to come running home in the afternoon if there is a small ration of pellets in their pens.

One consideration, however, is to choose the breed most suited to your needs as a smallholder. The choice is made easier for you in the relatively small number you will be able to keep.

Sheep (and goats) are classified as small stock units (SSUs) and attention should be paid to the carrying capacity of your property.

Meat breeds are much more sensible for a smallholder than wool breeds, particularly given the high price of mutton nowadays.

If you know what you are doing, it is also possible to run a good quality sheep breeding operation on a smallholding. Money can be made by either selling the progeny out of hand or at an annual auction if there are sufficient head to warrant it.

Goats

Similar in size and nutritional needs to sheep goats are, nevertheless, another matter entirely. For a start they are more intelligent, and inquisitive. And they are consummate escape artists. Thus, goat fencing needs to be much more robust than sheep fencing.

Grazing-wise they are very good at eating just about anything they find in front of them. For this reason they are sometimes used in flocks to clear weeds from heavily degraded land.

There is a ready market for goat’s milk, for cheese, and as fresh milk for those who are intolerant of cow’s milk. Moreover, there is a ready market for goat meat.

And, like sheep, if you know what you’re doing it is quite possible to run a small breeding operation on a smallholding.

Pigs

Although they are among the most popular smallholder livestock breeds in Europe and North America, pigs are not as common on smallholdings in South Africa as they perhaps should be. And the reason is simply a regulatory one.

For, municipal health and housing bylaws make it almost impossible to legally house commercial breed pigs on a smallholding. That’s because the bylaws (in most municipal jurisdictions, anyway) require pig housing to be situated no less that 100m from any boundary fence, and no less than 100 m from any residential structure within the smallholding.

 

Thus, one would need a large plot indeed to house pigs within these constraints.

Given, however, the dysfunctional state of many (if not most) South African municipalities today one can expect to see canny smallholders increasingly choosing pigs as their livestock type, either to breed with, or to slaughter and consume at home.

It is, however, quite common to find “specialist” breeds (such as Asian Potbellies) in small numbers, free ranging on plots, being kept as pets rather than for the pot.

Intelligent and inquisitive

Pigs are highly intelligent and inquisitive, and will do anything they can to go where they think there is something interesting. This includes climbing over fences, or digging under them. For this reason, it has become common practice to house pigs in brick and concrete pens. However, bricks and concrete being expensive, these pens are often at an absolutely minimum size. The result is a build-up of smell from their faeces and urine, and flies.

These unsanitary conditions are not in the pigs’ natural nature, however. Left to their own devices, with plenty of space and clean water, pigs are fastidious about cleanliness.

Click here for more articles on keeping livestock.

Main image: Shazz from geograph.org.uk via Wikimedia