Animals for Food Production on One Acre Lots or Less

food production

Recently we have been having many discussions on what would be the best animals for food production on smaller properties.  By that, we mean one acre or less.

The factors that we took in consideration for food production were

  • The length of the animal’s gestation period.
  • Does the animal product multiple births and how long to maturity.
  • Can the animal live off your land?
  • Does it compete for resources with you?
  • What type of workload does it create for you?
  • Can it be butchered easily at home?
  • Do you have the resources to preserve the quantity of meat? Remember you are preserving the meat without refrigeration.
  • How much land and fence is needed.

After considerable discussion, we decided that the following animals were the best choice for most of us for food production on small lots.  The list we ended up with, included chicken, rabbits, guinea fowl, guinea pigs and small goats.

Chickens provide eggs and meat.  The eggs take only around 21 days to hatch and they are ready to butcher at 3 months.  They can also provide pest control by eating insects. Chickens are easy to care for and don’t take up much space. You can let them free range. The down side to chickens is that everything wants to eat them.  They are also quite messy and you frequently have to clean their water troughs since they like to mess in them.  One solution to protecting chickens from predators is to build a chicken tractor.  A chicken tractor is a movable chicken coop lacking a floor that you move around the yard.

food production Rabbits would be a good choice for food production.  They can be in-bred fairly aggressively, without a lot of issues. A couple of females and one male can provide a small family with enough delicious meat indefinitely.  Their manure can be directly placed into your garden without the need to compost it prior.  The pelts can be tanned and used for leather.

You can even keep rabbits inside, which makes for easy concealment. They can be trained to use a litter box like a cat. If you want to keep them outdoors, they can share a coop with chickens.  Put the chickens on the first floor and the rabbits on the second.

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food production
pygmy goats

Goats have helped sustain mankind for thousands of years.  Goats provide milk, meat, fur and manure.  If you have a bit of land, they can feed themselves.  Goats need more care than chickens.  A good fence is needed to keep track of them.  In the old days, they used goat herders. They are prey to coyotes, wild dogs and other predators For small properties, consider pygmy goats.  They can provide milk and meat just like their larger cousins.

Guinea fowl; make great watch dogs, they make lots of noise when someone comes around. They also think ticks are the best snack food in the world.  However, Guinea fowl do not take well to being caged so they lay their eggs in hidden nests.  This makes them vulnerable to predators and it hard for you to find the eggs. But they are good eating.

food production
Guinea pigs
food production
Guinea fowl

 

 

 

 

 

 

Guinea pigs are something else you may want to consider.  These are very popular in South American countries. Peruvians eat more than 65 million guinea pigs every year.  Guinea pigs have more protein and less cholesterol than beef, pork, or chicken  They can be kept in indoor cages and are easy to raise, great for operational secrecy.  I have never eaten one, but friends from South America say they are very tasty.

Guinea pigs can weigh up to seven pounds.  They’re also vegetarians and eat grass. However, in some states like California it is illegal to raise them for food production.

Hope this post helps you decide what animals you want to raise for food production. Let us know what experience you have had with any of these animals.

Howard

 

 

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6 thoughts on “Animals for Food Production on One Acre Lots or Less”

  1. gonewiththewind

    I have read that two female and one male rabbit will produce more meat in a year than one steer and eat 1/4th the food. Where I grew up rabbits were raised for food and it was incredibky simple. They typically had two enclosures for the females to raise their young past weaning, a large enclosure for the young from weaning to butchering and a enclosure for the breeding male(s). They stacked one set of pens on top of another set. That is two on top and two on the bottom both with a sheet metal panel underneath to deflect the urine and poop out the back where it piled up for easy collection. They stayed outside winter or summer, shaded in the summer and protection from wind and hay for bedding in the winter was all that was needed. No noise, not much odor, check the water daily and feed daily. I’ve been told the Rex is the least trouble health, birthing and survival wise and a pretty good meat breed.

  2. We have Guinea fowl. Just a word of warning, they are loud. Not only when someone comes around, but pretty much all day long. Very loud. They may not work well if you live near neighbors.

  3. gonewiththewind

    I have known a couple of people who raised pigeons as a hobby. One was a nieghbor,he would let the pigeons out of the coop and they would fly as a flock in huge circles around the house until they had enough excercise and then they would land and get back in the coop. So it seems doable. But not a lot of meat on pigeons and I’m not too sure the eggs would be something to look forward to either.

  4. I have 7/8 of an acre, and we have 4 sheep (3 ewes/1ram) 5 rabbits (3does/2bucks), and 7 chickens (6/1). Between them we have more than enough fresh meat, eggs, fertilizer and compost for our family of 6, as well as scraps enough to supply/supplement 2 dogs and 3 cats! If/when shtf, the majority of our production animals are already raised getting a large variety of fresh greens, weeds, and grasses, so only the chickens will go from pen to tractor to preserve the garden and allow them to work efficiently.

  5. You wrote “You can even keep rabbits inside, which makes for easy concealment. They can be trained to use a litter box like a cat. If you want to keep them outdoors, they can share a coop with chickens. Put the chickens on the first floor and the rabbits on the second.” My father in law and I have raised rabbits in pens suspended above the floor and let the chickens have access under that area to clean up what the rabbits wasted, it would well. The biggest problem is keeping the chickens from roosting above the pens, the rabbits did not appreciate them a bit.

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