Small-Scale Livestock Farming

by Carol Ekarius

  Start babies on dry food quickly. If they aren’t on pasture, offer a small pile of hay for them to nibble at right away. Whole oats are an excellent starter food, though for the first few days you may have to teach them to eat the oats. After feeding their milk ration and while they’re still smacking their lips together, place a small handful of oats in their mouth. They may dribble out more than they swallow in the first day or two, but then they’ll start to eat the oats. Once they get the hang of eating the solid food, leave a little pan out for them to eat free-choice after their milk.

  It is crucial that all newborns receive the colostrum from their mother, within the first 24 hours of life. Colostrum is the first milk a mammal secretes after it gives birth, and it jump-starts the baby’s immune system (see chapter 8). If for some reason, as with an orphaned animal, the mother’s colostrum isn’t available, there are commercial colostrum products you can purchase from your vet, or you can feed colostrum you have saved (and frozen) from other animals in your herd. It’s best if the colostrum comes from the same species, but in a real pinch you can use cow’s colostrum for other species. Most dairy farmers keep some in their freezer, and will usually share in an emergency.

  CHAPTER 7

  Facilities

  As my father always pointed out to me, farms and ranches that made a good profit were never flashy. They didn’t have white fences. They were rather threadbare, austere, and rostered not one more asset than was absolutely necessary. . . . The problem for most farmers and ranchers is there is too much of their wealth invested in things that “rust, rot, and depreciate” and not enough invested in things that grow, add value, and reproduce themselves.

  — Allan Nation, The Stockman Grassfarmer

  (September 1995)

  LIVESTOCK FACILITIES include housing, fencing, storage areas, and so on. Good facilities can make your life a good deal easier, but there are lots of things that fall into the facilities category that you can live without!

  Buildings

  Buildings are one of the things that you can live without. Don’t get me wrong, a nice barn can be a great asset, but you don’t have to have a barn to keep livestock. In fact, for the small-scale farmer a conventional barn may just be a liability, because it’s another building that must be maintained.

  Most classes of livestock don’t need buildings. At times buildings can be detrimental to an animal’s health; animals crammed into a barn in winter are far more likely to fall victim to pneumonia than animals that are outdoors. We’ve lived in some of the harshest climates in the United States, and our animals wintered outside. They did well at 40°F ( 40°C), as long as they could get out of the wind. You don’t have to have buildings, but you do have to have windbreaks. An open shed is the ideal, providing relatively inexpensive wind protection and a dry place in inclement weather, but even this can be done without.

  Now, what about the other classes of livestock — those that do need buildings? Small animals, like chickens, ducks, or rabbits will need some type of structure for protection from both the elements and predators, at least at night. For many wild creatures, it takes but a few nights to realize that a free dinner can be had at the farmstead.

  Baby animals born in inclement weather must have protection from the elements; if you’re hell-bent on lambing in January or February, or calving in February or March, plan on having a building!

  Unless you get a barn as part of the deal with your farm, don’t set your mind on the notion that a barn is the only type of building that will do. For poultry, a small traditional henhouse will work, or you can build a chicken-mobile, which will let you move your chickens around your pastures for maximum productivity (Figure 7.1). Rabbits can be raised in individual hutches or in a pasture rabbit cage similar to the chicken-mobile.

  Figure 7.1. Portable chicken houses are a great way to move chickens around the farm, providing clean ground and access to new feed. Typically, chickens spread out in an area of about 150 feet (45 m) around their living quarters, so each time you move portable housing, allow at least 150 feet (45 m) from the last spot the house was parked.

  Alternatives to conventional housing include straw bale structures, hoop houses, and small metal or plastic hutches; even tents or tepees may work.

  At Little Wing Farm, an old dairy barn came with the land. This was the classic style of barn that you see throughout the Midwest; it was red with a large haymow above the main level, and a silo butted up against the side. The barn was still functional but needed lots of work, including replacing part of the metal roof, upgrading the wiring, and repairing the concrete floor. The milk room fixtures (compressor, vacuum pump, and stainless-steel bulk tank) were in working order, but the walls had rotted out.

  Our original decision to milk cows was based, in part, on the fact that we had a dairy barn. We did some remodeling, fixing up the milk room to please the inspectors, and we built a three-cow, stanchioned milk parlor in the front of the barn. By making a parlor in front, we were able to bring the old barn up to grade-A standards without remodeling the entire place. We installed a pipeline for milking, so milk went from the cow to the bulk tank with no handling in between.

  The back two-thirds of the barn remained much as it was when we first bought the place. We didn’t regularly use it for any livestock, except the chickens, which were confined in it during the winter and slept in it during the warmer months. We would, from time to time, use it as a hospital area for sick or hurt animals, or to protect a mother with a newborn baby.

  THE CHICKENS AND ELAINE

  All grade-A dairy barns have to be inspected twice a year (grade-B facilities are inspected once a year) by a state or federal inspector. For the first few years we milked cows, our inspector was Elaine.

  Elaine was much feared in our neighborhood. You knew right away when she came through the area; her name could be heard on the lips of most patrons at the local café, and her name was generally accompanied by those colorful epithets that aren’t spoken in church.

  Elaine saw our chickens scratching around out in the back of the barn on one of her first visits and said, “Oh no, those chickens must go!”

  “Well, Elaine,” I said, “can you show me where it says in the regulations that my chickens can’t live in the back of the barn? After all, I understand the regulations to say there can’t be any other animals in the milking area, but that’s up front in the parlor — not back here.”

  Elaine sputtered something about not having a copy of the regulations handy. Much to her chagrin, I pulled one out of my desk for her to refer to. She began leafing through it and muttering to herself. Finally, she said, “It’s our interpretation that the chickens can’t be back here.”

  Poor Elaine! She didn’t know what to do when I said, “Elaine, you’re paid to enforce the regulations, not interpret them. Show me where it says the chickens can’t stay, or let it drop!”

  The chickens stayed. I became a small legend at the café. And the moral of this story: If you are dealing with bureaucrats, get yourself a copy of the actual regulation that they are enforcing. What the regulation says you have to do, you have to do, but — that’s all folks! There’s more on this topic in chapter 10.

  In contrast to Little Wing Farm, Bull Springs Ranch has no barn. A small old henhouse is the sole building that remains to attest to this place’s agricultural past. Oh, and miles of ancient barbed wire also endure, testimony to some bygone rancher’s labors.

  Ventilation

  If you have a barn or are building one, be sure to provide adequate ventilation. Drafts kill —ventilation saves. Windows that are up high on the wall and open in from the bottom provide excellent ventilation without drafts (Figure 7.2). In a large barn, ventilation flues along with the windows allow for good air movement. For small buildings, screened openings directly under the peak of the roof should do the trick.

  Sanitation and Deep Bedding

  When animals are housed indoors for any length of time, sanitation becomes criti
cal. There are two basic approaches to indoor sanitation: Clean up all manure, urine, and bedding each day, and cover the floor with a fresh layer of lime and a little bit of bedding, or the method we prefer — deep bedding. With deep bedding, build up an initial layer of bedding (e.g., straw, wood shavings, sawdust, shredded paper or newsprint, dried leaves in fall) about 6 inches (15.2 cm) deep. With small critters like rabbits or chickens, every week or two the surface areas that are damp or full of too much manure (directly under the chickens’ roost, for instance) will need to be shoveled out. Then add enough fresh bedding for the entire area to again be dry and clean. When using the deep-bedding method with large animals, you need to do the pitchfork work every day or two, but it usually only takes a few minutes; then add the dry bedding.

  Once every year or two, you’ll need to clean out all the bedding, down to the floor, and start over. This material is already partly composted! If you build a compost pile out of it and let it go one more year, you’ll have the best organic soil amendment imaginable.

  Deep bedding not only gives you a great compost product and cuts down on daily cleaning chores during the year, but it also keeps your animals clean, healthy, and happy. The deep bedding provides a nice soft, warm cushion for them to lounge around on. We had a first-calf heifer that gave birth to a very large calf in the barn. She became a “downer cow,” unable to stand up initially because of the difficult birth. We called our veterinarian to get his advice, and when he heard she was in our barn on the deep bedding, he told us to just give her a day or two, rolling her over once or twice a day. Sure enough, the next morning she was up and about on her own. Had she been lying on a concrete floor, her condition would have been aggravated.

  Another benefit of deep bedding is that it absorbs the urine very well, so less ammonia is generated. Ammonia fumes make the work environment unpleasant for you and cause a broad range of health problems for your animals, including pneumonia and other respiratory problems. Ammonia fumes have also been known to cause blindness.

  Figure 7.2. When animals are kept in a building, good ventilation is crucial to their health. Windows that are situated high on the wall and that are hinged at the bottom so they can open in and down are good. For very large structures, ventilation flues work well. The flue acts like a chimney, moving air up and out of the barn.

  PEST CONTROL IN FACILITIES

  I have a bad attitude toward flies, especially when they’re buzzing around where I’m trying to work. I asked Roger Moon, an entomologist at the University of Minnesota College of Agriculture, to share with us some techniques for dealing with pests both in and out of the barn. He came to the farm for an afternoon and had plenty of non-chemical suggestions; some may help you also:

  Screen openings.

  Close doors and shade windows (old feed sacks work well both for shade and as a screening material); most bugs will not be interested in entering a darkened area.

  Use traps: sticky tapes or the jars with an attractant in them.

  Build physical traps in walls. These work because the flies head toward the light.

  Use sawdust or wood shavings for bedding material instead of straw. The wood by-products have a chemical compound in them that bugs don’t like. The other good point about this option is that sawdust is actually far more absorbent than straw.

  Use natural organisms that control flies. Muscovy ducks and guinea fowl both eat flies and larvae. Chickens break up dung piles and eat larvae. Dung beetles and other beneficial insects can be purchased from hatcheries.

  Sweden has some of the toughest animal welfare laws of any country in the world. To comply with these laws, Swedish farmers raising animals indoors must use deep bedding.

  Windbreaks

  As the temperature decreases, the energy an animal needs to survive increases but this demand is easily met with sufficient feed. However, when the temperature decreases and the wind speed increases, the additional energy requirements become more than the animal can easily make up. Windbreaks cut down the wind speed.

  Windbreaks can be either natural or human-made. A thick grove of trees or a low willowy area provides excellent wind protection. A planted wind-break should contain plants of varying heights, from brush up to tall trees (Figure 7.3).

  The sides of existing buildings can sometimes provide wind protection, but at other times they exaggerate the effects of the wind. The ideal human-made windbreak has spaces between the boards. These spaces slow the speed of the wind as it passes through them, allowing force to be significantly reduced (Figure 7.4). An L- or T-shaped break provides the best protection. Animals can move around the wind-break to always be on the lee side.

  Handling Facilities

  Unless you plan on keeping just one or two very petlike animals, you’ll be well advised to develop some handling facilities early in your operation. These don’t have to be fancy, and they don’t have to be expensive, but the time and money you put into developing them will save you a great deal of grief, and possibly some money to boot.

  The handling facility should be designed to make delivery and loading of animals easy on you, and easy on the animals. It also makes sorting animals simpler.

  In Minnesota, we designed a system of gates and doors in our barn and silo room (which was attached to the side of the barn) for this purpose. It worked for moving animals in and out, and provided a controlled environment when animals were first dropped off, but it wasn’t easy to move new animals through and didn’t provide a separate holding area to isolate new arrivals. The next time around, we splurged and purchased stock panels and gates. The portability of these panels provides a great deal of flexibility while meeting the demands of a handling facility.

  Figure 7.3. Planted windbreaks should be composed of several rows of mixed vegetation, including both brushy types of plants and tall evergreen species. County Extension Agents are a good source of information on which plants will grow well in your area.

  Figure 7.4. Man-made windbreaks can be used where no natural windbreaks are available. This windbreak is simply made with dead aspen (poplar) logs laced to stock panels. It’s cheap and portable, so as we move stock to different paddocks, we can move the windbreak.

  Handling facilities should be designed so that a truck or trailer can easily back up to a loading chute. These chutes should be just wide enough for large animals to fit in one at a time. The pen that feeds or receives animals from the chute should be curved (Figure 7.5).

  Operations that move lots of animals in and out, such as stocker operations (all animals are brought in when the grass begins growing and sold as the grass becomes dormant), benefit from solid chutes and pen walls. If the animals can’t see things going on around them, they calm down quickly. Such operations may also benefit from a scale incorporated into the loading chute, so animals can be weighed coming and going.

  If only a few animals are brought in or out each year, slatted sides are fine. The chute itself should be constructed of steel or heavy wooden boards, but pens can be made of just about any type of fencing material. Just make sure it’s well constructed, because when animals first arrive, they’re scared and excitable — a combination that’s hard on fences.

  When new animals arrive, let them stay in the handling pen for a few days with food and water supplied right there. This gives you some time to observe them for signs of illness, which often shows up quickly after the stress of moving. If illness does appear, the chute comes in handy for performing veterinary procedures, and the pen allows you to keep the illness isolated from your existing stock. Our Minnesota barn didn’t provide us with an isolation facility, and we brought disease onto our farm with a load of calves we bought. Isolation of that one pen of calves would have saved us thousands of dollars and some terrible stress.

  Figure 7.5. A curved holding pen can serve many purposes. It can be used as a training ring for horses, it can be used to isolate new or sick animals, and it of course serves well for shipping and receiving animals. The curved design
keeps frightened animals from bunching up in corners and injuring each other. If lots of new animals come and go during the year, then make the sides solid.

  SIZING HOLDING PENS

  The size of a holding pen depends in part on what type of critters you’ll primarily be holding, and how many you expect to hold at one time. Large animals (cows, horses, buffalo) need at least 20 square feet (1.9 m2) per animal, and smaller animals (sheep, goats, pigs, llamas) should have 7.5 square feet (0.7 m2) each. Mother animals with babies should have an additional 5 and 2 square feet (0.5 m2 and 0.2 m2), respectively. The formula for the area of a circle is 3.1417 x radius2. Using this formula, the area of a holding pen with a radius of 15 feet (4.6 m) would be 707 square feet (65.7 m2) and would hold 35 cows, 28 cows with calves, 94 ewes, or 71 ewes with their lambs.

  Sacrific Areas

  To a grass farmer, a sacrifice area isn’t a place to take animals for a ritualistic slaughter; it’s a place where the grass is going to get too beat up to ever really grow well. It is the spot where you feed hay during winter storms, or where you feed during the spring months if the fields are so wet that grazing them would destroy the sod.

  With some planning, the sacrifice area can be designed to serve multiple goals. One paddock that contains the windbreak or an open-sided shed could serve as the sacrifice area. For a farm with horses, a training ring could serve as a sacrifice area. If new animals aren’t added to an operation very often, the handling facilities can provide the sacrifice area.