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I love pork, but have been worried now that I know they are using mRNA vaccines in pigs. I need to be very careful with buying pork anymore.

I need to follow a few pig raisers to see if I could pull off pigs where I live. Once I think it is doable, then I need to convince my husband that it is a good idea. That will be even more work.

I've already gotten rabbits and had my first litter 4 weeks ago. I had to get rid of chickens because I developed a lung allergy and couldn't breathe. I need some more ability to raise animals since I'm keto. Pigs, sheep (probably hair sheep because I don't want to deal with shaving the wool), or goats? What is easiest? What can I convince my husband to get on board with?

I have 4.5 acres usuable to work with (technically 6.5 acres, but ~1 acre is swamp land on the other side of the river and ~1 acre is the bottom of the river) and already have a barn, but it has coal in it for heat. With the coal dust, I don't know if it is good to put animals inside or not.

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Tyler 2y ago

4.5 acres is plenty for either sheep or pigs but also depends on if it is open pasture, wooded, etc. You have water access so that is a great start.

If pasture I would go with the hair sheep. Can almost be maintenance free on pasture and very little input. Would need to consider if you’re just looking for feeder lambs to grow out and harvest in fall/winter or actually over winter a flock where you’d likely need to supplement some feed.

Pigs work wonders on wooded terrain. Cleared out about a 1/3 of an acre strip of woods for me that was all thick underbrush. When we bought our property we couldn’t walk through and now it looks plowed with the larger trees still in tact. Eventually I’ll move them out to allow for grasses to grow in.

I will say with pigs you spend a lot more on feed unless you can find a source of scraps from a friend, neighbor, restaurant, etc.

With the size of land available to you - i don’t see why you couldn’t manage both. May take some planning but could definitely be done. Would suggest starting with one though!! Hope that helps a bit.

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Discussion

LibertyGal 2y ago

Thanks for the advice. I was leaning towards hair sheep because I figured that would be the easiest. Our yard is mostly grassland with a few small fruit trees and a few large cottonwoods. I had a bunch more fruit trees, but a massive grass fire vaporized all but the biggest and oldest. I've planted a few new ones, but none have produced yet. Hopefully this year.

For our life, raising feeder lambs would be better, but I like the idea of raising year round so we can provide for ourselves if things keep going in the direction they currently are. We'll see.

I also need to work out something with the water. We live on the river, but it is a low bluff, so it isn't directly accessible for livestock. In theory we have an irrigation ditch running through our yard as well, but it doesn't run all of the time either, especially in the winter.

Tyler 2y ago

Check out hydraulic ram pumps. Only work if you have some elevation drop but they don’t require any electricity and will give you non stop flow. Believe 1 foot of drop can create 7 ft of lift roughly. We pump from our creek bed to a 55 gallon drum and run hoses from there to the animals.

I did have a tower with a 330 gallon IBC but underestimated the weight of that much water..