Micro Farm Animals: The Only 2 Animals You Need
Raising animals on a micro farm can be difficult. A micro farm is often pretty small. This pretty much disqualifies bigger animals or a large amount of animals. Luckily, the only animals you really need are low maintenance, cost effective, and they don’t require a lot of land!
The only two animals you need on your micro farm are chickens and goats. The chickens will provide you with meat and eggs. The goats will provide you with meat and milk. This gives you three different sources of protein, and a source for dairy products such as cheese, butter, ghee, yogurt, sour cream, etc. Both of these animals have the capability to help out around your micro farm. They can fertilize and create compost, and they can control pests, weeds, thorns, and bramble. This combination of animals gives you the widest variety of food that two animals can give you.
Why Chickens As A Micro Farm Animal?
There are other birds besides chickens that can give you both meat and eggs. Ducks and quail are popular to raise instead of chickens. I talk more about these birds in my post Egg Layers: Everything You Need To Know.
The reason I recommend chickens specifically is because they are the most popular bird to eat. Chicken is an extremally popular meat all around the world. Everything from the breast to the feet of the chicken are used in different cuisines. The eggs are also the the most popular egg to consume. The taste of chicken is familiar and generally enjoyed by most people. This not only makes it more likely you will be happy with the taste of your bird, but it will also be easier to sell if you choose to do so.
If you prefer the meat and eggs of a different kind of bird, then go for it! Whichever bird you feel will be best for you and your family is the best one to chose.
Why Goats As A Micro Farm Animal?
Goat is not eaten in America very often. However, it is one of the most popular meats in the world. Goats are omnivores just like chickens. You will likely need to supplement some other feed because they eat more than chickens. You won’t be able to feed goats on a single kitchen’s scraps alone. Finding other sources of food scraps, planting plants around the area you run your goats that are high in protein, or buying supplemental feed will be necessary. However, they are one of the smallest and easiest farm animals.
They also provide milk! You can make milk into butter, cheese, yogurt, soap, ghee, sour cream, dry curd cottage cheese (farmers cheese), kefir, and so many other things! Milk has sooo many uses. So, for someone who is looking to become more self reliant, harvesting your own milk is huge. Goats also produce less milk than cows. Cows produce way more milk than the average family consumes. This is great if you want to sell milk, but otherwise it becomes a hassle. Goats produce a much more reasonable amount. Goats produce 3-5 quarts of milk a day (cows produce 6-7 gallons).
Between goats and chickens, you will harvest two different types of meat, eggs, and milk. Both of these animals are pretty self reliant themselves. They will need some care of course, but compared to bigger farm animals, they are pretty independent.
What If I Want More Variety?
If you want more variety in your meats, you have three options:
- Add other easy-to-raise micro farm animals
- Hunting
- Buy more land so you can raise bigger animals
Buying more land is great if you have the means and you really want to be able to raise bigger animals. Once you buy more land you will have a small farm rather than a micro farm. I will focus on the other two options for the purposes of this post.
Other Micro Farm Animals
There are other low maintenance animals that make great additions to a micro farm. In addition to the other bird options mentioned above, certain fish such as tilapia are very easy to raise. Pigs are another animal that can be pretty easy to raise. Both of these are pretty easy to fit into your micro farm.
Fish require a tank or a pond to live in. They don’t have to take up that much space. A single tilapia fish only needs 3 to 6 gallons of water to grow. Adding fish also opens up the option to start incorporating aquaponics. Aquaponics uses the same basic principles of hydroponics (growing plants in water instead of soil), only it uses what is naturally produced from aquatic animals as fertilizer. This is as opposed to adding in your own fertilizer.
Pigs are a little bigger than any other animal on this list. However, because pigs are omnivores, they don’t need as much space as cows for instance. You can feed them in a similar way to your chickens. They will need more food than your chickens, so you may have to get creative with other food sources (sometimes schools will give away or sell their food scraps to people who raise animals). According to the PennState Extension website, pigs actually only need about eight square feet of outdoor space as long as some indoor space is also provided. They aren’t very active animals, so no need to give them a tone of space they don’t need and won’t necessarily use.
If your heart is absolutely set on ground beef, there may still be an option for you. There are miniature cows that only need a little over a half an acre to roam. This is about half the land required to raise a standard size cow! Mini cows taste the same as standard size cows, the only difference is that they’re about half the size. You will still get about 350-500 pounds of meat off these little guys. This is plenty for a family and you will likely have extra to sell.
Rabbits are also great sources of protein and are very easy to raise. Some people raise rabbits above their chickens so that all the fecal matter of the rabbits drops down. The chickens will then consume the fecal matter which helps offset feed costs.
Hunting
If you want different varieties of meat, hunting is likely your best option. You would be hard pressed to find a wild chicken or a wild goat, but deer, pheasants, turkeys, and wild boar are abundant in the wild. Wild boar are actually a huge issue right now in several parts of the US. There are health benefits of eating wild caught meat. It is often more nutrient rich because of the diversity of its diet.
Hunting is cheaper than raising farm animals. You don’t have to feed it or spend your time tending to it. It’s also a great life skill!
A NOTE: Please get your meat tested for disease before consuming it.
Summary
Goats and chickens are what I recommend as your micro farm animals. They will provide you with multiple sources of protein and milk. Even if you are a vegetarian and don’t wish to eat the animals, you can eat both the eggs and the milk!
If you want more protein options, you can add or swap in other animals that are easy to raise and micro farm friendly. You can also hunt, or increase your land to accommodate bigger animals.
Thank you for reading this post! Comment down below what animals you have on your micro farm!
I wish you all joyful farming!