English: A variety of my different breeds of chickens! (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Yesterday I was involved in a discussion of what would be the easiest and most practical animal to raise in a long term disaster situation for food. We basically came up with three choices, but never did decide which would be best. The three choices were pigs, chickens and goats.
The factors that we took in consideration were.
- The length of the animal’s gestation period.
- Does the animal produce multiple births and how long to maturity.
- Can the animal live off the 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.
Chickens are one possible choice. A member of our family currently raises them and we always have more eggs than we need. 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. Chickens are easy to care for and don’t take up much space. 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.
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. Both chickens and pigs can be raised in a much smaller area.
Now we come to pigs (my choice, I love pork). Pigs are omnivores and will eat just about anything. Piglets (baby pigs) can be butchered and eaten at just about any age. You can preserve the meat as hams, bacon, and salt pork or canned. The different tastes that the meat from pigs can produce would lend variety to your diet.
A drawback to pigs is that they do not produce a byproduct, chickens produce eggs and goats milk. If the pens are not kept clean, they will be a major attraction for flies. Mankind has been raising pigs for thousands of years.
I agree with the rabbits first. They can eat grass, weeds, veggies, almost any of the veggie parts you would compost. Food would be easy to grow for them and you can start your herd in urban settings if you don’t have your homestead yet. I plan on doing the new zealand/californian cross to start with but would also like to do a breed for the fiber. I have been looking into this area a great deal trying to figure out how to sustain livestock when grain can not be purchased. I’ve been trying to figure out what I could keep, how much land would be needed for pasture per animal and Ive found several books on growing grains in small areas. I still have a long way to go to gather the information. I appreciate seeing posts and questions from people thinking along the same lines. OH, I wanted to add, that ALL meat can be canned and there is always jerky too. I raw pack can meat and love it love it love it!
I forgot to add Muscovy ducks. I’d probably go with them on an equal basis as rabbits. Muscovies are very self reliant, needing very little attention. They forage very well, lay lots of tasty eggs, are great mothers, and taste fantastic. I just hate plucking them! That’s were rabbits are the best, imho. I can dispatch and dress a rabbit in less than tn minutes. A bird, duck or chicken, takes me at least twice that,
db
Thanks for the information! We love it! Please keep them coming!
What about (Pilgrim) geese? They eat weeds, grass, lay about 30-35 eggs per year, they are very good at hatching out their own goslings. Born in the spring they are ready to butcher within 3 months. Only need enough water to submerge their heads. We have 1 male and 3 females and in a perfect situation we could have as many as 100 goslings per spring. We started raising rabbits for this very reason a few years ago, but found them to be more like pets. We switched to chickens, turkeys, and geese. We raise about 35 turkeys (Heritage Breeds Royal Palms & Sweetgrass) each year for are family to eat and about 50 chickens ( Mostly roosters Black Copper Marans & Silver Laced Wyandottes). My kids have been selling eggs and the geese, chicks, turkeys that they raise also.
I have never considered geese. That would be a great ideas as well. Thank you for your contribution!
Another great option is rabbits which is why I chose rabbits for my first project. They can produce year-round, have VERY healthy and rich meat and litterally can grow off of weeds. And their poo? It is the best fertilizer in the world. Plus they produce great furs. :3
Great Suggestion Thank you!. We plan on having rabbits on the Homestead, do you have suggestions?
There are quite a few good options, actually. The most powerful producers are New Zealand Whites. They’re big bunnies and consistantly pop out lots of fast growing kits. This is what I have right now. There are other NZ colors that are just a little under developed compared to the whites but also great producers. My goal is to someday have a set of New Zeland reds and blacks. Californians are just a little smaller but lighter boned and are also great producers. I have heard that a cross of NZW/Cali is some of the best meat babies around.
Other good rabbits if you’re looking for something a little more interesting are American Blues which are very rare and a little smaller, Palominos which are smaller and have some trouble breeding but have the highest meat to bone ratio and are very calm. The german and Flemmish Giant breeds can get up to 25lbs but they grow very slow and have heavy bones. Silver fox rabbits, standard rex rabbits are specialty fur breeds with a good body under them and the french angora is a wool breed with a good body. I have also heard that some of the larger lops like french and english can be good as well as champagne d’argents even though these are typically bred more as pets.
My personal favorites are the alternate NZ colors and silver foxes. But as long as you pick large rabbits with a good reproductive history you should have very little trouble getting good results. :3 Rabbits are great like that.
I have to agree on rabbits, and they would be my first choice over chickens….
And as to rabbit breeds, I’m using New Zealand does with an AlTex buck, a terminal sire breed used to shave a week or so off grow out times. This adds a litter per year to production.
Rabbits require less space than chickensand are silent so draw less attention, as well as the points quarteracrehome made. Production times from breeding to harvest is as little as 11 weeks (30 day gestation plus 7 week grow out) with 6-8 (or more!) kits dressing out to 3-4 pounds PER BREEDING DOE. (This is under optimal conditions. Extreme conditions your production times will increase based on feed quality, and how well the rabbits take to the diet change.)
What do you expect? They breed like rabbits!
db
We tried to raise Flemish Giant rabbits with not much luck. They are very costly compared to other rabbits. When you can find them in our area they are about $80 per rabbit. They do not do well in the heat and need to be raised on slats to protect their feet.They are very gentle and good with kids. We have a male named Thumper who is about 23 pounds and is almost 5 years old.
We did do very well with the White California breed. They are very affordable, we paid about $10 per rabbit. My kids sold them for $10-$15 per rabbit and always sold them very fast. They were great mothers and we had a few doe’s that had over 10 babies at a time. Rabbits are very good source of fast growing protein. For a meat rabbit they were a good choice. I have also been told that New Zealand Whites are a very good meat rabbit. Good luck!
The giants are not so much up here, maybe $30 each and they can have pretty big litters depending on where you get them from… And their adult furs are often worth more because they are SO big. I reccommend solid floors and bedding for ALL rabbits though because there are some serious welfare issues with the standard wire cages. NZW and Californians seem to be pretty standard though and are your typical “meat rabbit”. Which is part of why they’re so cheap. :3