The Truth about Livestock that Hardly Anyone Will Tell You

Part 7 of the Finding Healthy Property: Purchasing Land for Healing, Homesteading, and a Healthy Home series

Welcome to part seven of the Finding Healthy Property: Purchasing Land for Healing, Homesteading, and a Healthy Home series! All of the sections may be found under the tag: Finding Healthy Property.

As is typical for many topics, my recommendations regarding livestock radically differ from almost everyone else. Thus, I am making a significant part of this section public to help as many people as possible avoid costly (and inhumane) mistakes caused by taking the advice of deceptive self-professed experts who live in big city high-rises, with meticulously-manicured nails.

Please share this critical information to help reduce needless suffering and frustration!

Most sections will not be this long, but this didn’t really lend itself well to division. You are most welcome to print out anything we have available online for easier reading.

In this extensive discussion regarding livestock, you may learn some facts that are surprising to you. I’m not going to sugar-coat the reality of raising livestock, as my role is to share with you the truth as I know it personally, equipping you with some of the information necessary to make an informed decision for you and your family- one based on facts, not fairy tales.

Livestock

Many of us hold a romantic view of our rural, pastoral past, envisioning days of leisurely milking cows, strolling by ponds or streams, and gazing out upon successful crops, gently waving in a lazy breeze. The truth is far harsher.

Many a homesteader in modern recorded history failed at their attempt to live off the land and returned to urban life. Those were the lucky ones. The unlucky ones died via injuries, disease, malnutrition, or otherwise. Homesteading is extremely hard work, and even those individuals hardy enough to handle the work from the beginning still end up significantly reliant upon today’s world system to survive. Reality television is not, in fact, reality. YouTubers with popular homesteading channels rely on (substantial) income from YouTube in order to fund their projects, and all often is not what is portrayed. In fact, there are a number of “experts” in homesteading, gardening, and related fields with popular books out who live in condos or apartments in large cities. They have no idea what they’re talking about!

One self-professed “expert” on electroculture lives on the second floor in an apartment in the Phoenix, Arizona area. He has a few pots out on his deck, according to a video I watched in which he accidentally disclosed the truth. I’m not sure how that qualifies him as an expert in electroculture, but he certainly has quite the following online and surely makes a healthy living leading people astray and peddling related products. This is the world we live in. This is why you can’t trust much of what you see, hear, or read today. Evil men and seducers will wax worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived. It gets worse by the day.

Erroneous beliefs about livestock are pervasive and can be dangerous for humans as well as result in inhumane conditions for the poor, innocent animals. They deserve better.

Future livestock potential requires consideration not only of sufficient grazing land (ideally permitting for rotational grazing), but also for the necessary livestock housing, milking locations if relevant, feed storage, separate housing for sick or injured animals, birthing facilities, and potentially more. Such infrastructure can be more challenging to build on hills, if a property has steeper slopes. However, it’s not impossible.

Once again, my opinion won’t be a popular one on this topic, but it is the truth: there is 99.9% chance that livestock is not self-sustainable for you. In other words, if you’re expecting to raise livestock off-grid, without having to buy food, that is almost certainly a pipe dream.

The only situation in which this is possible is if one is raising the feed themselves. This requires land, human energy, and infrastructure for storage. In areas in which winter feed is required, even grass-fed cattle are going to need hay. That hay must be grown, harvested, dried, and stored properly. There are opportunities for failure every step of the way.

Recent years have seen grain and hay shortages, as well as spiking prices. Many farmers (full-time and part-time) who previously produced untreated hay are now applying chemicals. Others stopped producing hay commercially as the profit margins were too slim, as occurred with multiple farmers in our area from whom we previously purchased hay for rabbits. Producing animal feed necessitates extensive labor, tools, and infrastructure for storing the feed. These are factors that must be accounted for before jumping in and expecting self-sufficient livestock.

This effort required for production, storage, and later dispersal of animal feed is on top of basic livestock care, production of plant-based food on a homestead, child care, homemaking, food preservation, and one’s day job if they have one.

Returning back to infrastructure, livestock also requires shelter, some species more so than others. If you are planning to establish infrastructure for livestock, know that the return on investment most likely will not be realized in your lifetime. You’re building for future generations in this case, and considering the world in which we are living in, that doesn’t seem a wise investment of time or resources. Commercial livestock housing is produced with cheap, flimsy materials that barely stay assembled, and are not worth half of their high cost. We’ve investigated these options ourselves and they all fell flat on their face. Don’t trust the social media influencers who are only out to make a buck. Building solid livestock housing requires resources, skills, and time.

For those with medical limitations or who are prone to bouts of illness, know that nature waits for no man. You will have to push yourself to ensure any livestock is cared for no matter how you feel if you have minimal or no support to step in when you are ill or injured. As I often tell myself, “suck it up, Buttercup. You got this.”

And thus, despite the fact that I have serious medical repercussions from decades of trusting “the experts,” I am actually rather muscular and have significant endurance for traversing difficult terrain. One’s attitude really must be one of an overcomer, rather than that of a victim, in order to really move mountains in life. And livestock is, indeed, a mountain, as those who are currently healthy will become increasingly sick in direct correlation to the increasing toxicity of the world at large.

In spite of the limitations, there are, of course, situations in which you might opt for livestock, at least for the time being. I’m personally keeping my five remaining hens I currently have for as long as I can, knowing that the writing is on the wall. So let’s dig in a bit deeper and evaluate some of the pros and cons of different animals.

Sheep? Chickens? Goats? Oh My!

It is critical to note that every animal, herd, and flock is different. Don’t fall for the breed fallacy. Every single animal is different, and the habits of both individual animals and groups of animals as a whole change over time. For example, a flock of ducks may ignore the garden for years, then suddenly ravage it one summer, when other food is lacking.

Naturally, the more inherently self-sufficient an animal is, the better. With an environment that is increasing in toxicity by the day, this will result in more sick livestock and fewer healthy humans to care for the livestock. We can only do so much to mitigate the damage caused by omnipresent nnEMFs and chemicals.

Be sure to take the time to utilize a cost/benefit analysis of keeping any livestock. Feed, water, medicine (treatment and preventative medicine), infrastructure, time requirements, herding, housing, and fencing all need to be accounted for as costs. As for benefits, fertilization, meat, eggs, fiber, and companionship are all relevant factors to consider.

For all animals, it is essential to be ready and willing to humanely dispatch an animal at any given time. Emergencies happen, and it is on you to be prepared to respond swiftly and compassionately. Always have more than one method of humane dispatch available to you.

Let’s hone in on each potential animal in more detail. Note that I’m not covering more exotic livestock, like emus, llamas, or bison.