Winter Numbers

My last goat kid left for his new home the other day. He was the last of this year’s kids to be sold, so now I’m down to a hopefully manageable number of goats for the winter: two bucks, four adult does, and two doelings. Still to go are some of the chickens and ducks.

Manageable, of course, depends on a couple of things. For us, winter pasture is key. Secondly hay. These are the primary foods for goats, or should be, if nutritional quality is good. The winter garden, summer-harvested grains, or boughten feeds should be supplemental. And if the pasture and hay can support the goats, then most of the summer’s harvest of grains can supplement the poultry (which are also grass and insect eaters). Anyway, this is the model I’m working toward.

Trying to develop good quality sustainable pasture has been an ongoing challenge. As a goal it has included a huge learning curve and a lot of work on our part. Some of the things we’ve tried have been successful, others have not, and so much depends on the weather. In reality this has often been a source of discouragement as we strive to reach our self-sufficiency goals, but I’ll have more on that in another post.

The idea of winter numbers for livestock is an idea that comes from nature. In spring, herds and flocks increase with young, and the spring and summer growth sustain them. As the young mature, many of them head out on their own, thinning the numbers as the forage dies back. There’s less to eat but less animals to sustain. This is somewhat theoretical, of course, and we could go on and on about the evils of urbanization and fences for wildlife, but that’s not my point. My point is that nature offers a model for seasonal management of homestead critters.

In our case surplus animals are sold, traded, or feed us. In fact, I’m usually able to make enough from sales of goats to buy supplemental feed for everybody all winter. So in that sense, the critters are somewhat self-supporting.

I’ve experimented with this in other ways too. Several years ago I sold eggs to buy chicken feed, so that the chickens could pay for themselves. I don’t do that anymore. Why not? Well, if evaluated strictly in terms of money for feed it worked, i.e., I sold enough eggs to buy enough feed. But chickens are hard on the land, and if allowed unrestricted access to everything on the place they became destructive. They scratch up the mulch and soil around newly planted trees and bushes and often kill. If they manage to get into a newly planted pasture (and there’s always one, two, or four who manage), they eat all the pasture seed or seedling grass. The ducks love seed and grass too. In other words, our poultry have been one of those challenges I said I’d blog about soon! The conclusion we’ve come to is to keep just enough chickens for eggs for the two of us, which is probably about six hens. And one pair of breeding ducks. This will help both in terms of the amount of feed we need, plus the toll the poultry takes on the land.
Counting the cost includes so much more than money, then. It must also account for the impact the critters have on the land, plus the time and energy necessary to utilize the management techniques required to keep a balance. And it’s a highly individual decision. What we’ve concluded meets our needs may not be the same for someone else. It may even change for us from year to year. A homestead is always a learning experience, always a work in progress.