Tag Archives: goats

Putting Farm Animals to Work

Posted on April 17, 2017 by | 5 comments
Homestead in the Holler is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com.

 

Farm animals have an important place on the homestead.  From the backyard homesteader to the full time farmer, producing your own eggs, milk and meat is a fulfilling accomplishment.  We give our farm animals fresh food and water and the best care possible.  But could our farm animals being doing more for us in return?  We need to look at “the pigness of the pig and the chickeness of the chicken” as Joel Salatin puts it.

 

Instead of working against each farm animal’s natural instincts, why not have those instincts work for you instead?

Continue reading →

5 Comments

Posted in Animals, Homesteading

Tagged , , , , , , , ,

Getting started without permanent fencing

Posted on April 12, 2016 by | 4 comments

Getting started on the homestead without permanent fencing

Homestead in the Holler is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com.

When we purchased our farm in the summer of 2014, we knew we had a lot of work ahead of us.  Our farm had a lot of barns, most in disrepair.  The fencing wasn’t much better.  There was a lot of barbed wire, some of it was in good shape but most of the fence was in desperate need of repair.  There were some rotten posts, holes in parts of the fence, the entire fence down in other areas.  Despite all of this, we were eager to get started adding animals as soon as possible.  We wanted to add sheep, goats, cattle and pigs to our farm.

From the beginning we knew that we wanted to practice rotational grazing with all of our animals. Rotational grazing involves moving livestock to fresh paddocks to allow the grass in the previous paddocks to grow back. How frequently you move your livestock depends on your situation and can range from a couple of times a day, to once a week.  Electric fencing is often used in rotational grazing systems, with a permanent perimeter fence.  Electric fencing seemed like a good solution to our fencing issues.  The decision was made to use temporary electric fence exclusively until we could get some permanent fence built. 

 

Continue reading →

4 Comments

Posted in Animals, Farm Life, Homesteading

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , ,

Why We Love Nigerian Dwarf Goats

Posted on February 17, 2015 by | 24 comments
Why we love Nigerian Dwarf goats
Homestead in the Holler is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com.
Goats are a fun and useful addition to your homestead. They are a lot of fun to watch and the fresh goat milk is great! There are a lot of different breeds of goats to choose from, all of which can give good milk. However one breed of goat that is consistently overlooked for milk production is the Nigerian Dwarf.
Nigerian Dwarf goats are often considered pets and overlooked as a good dairy goat because of their small size. They may be smaller than a full sized goat, but to us, that is just one of the many benefits!
Here are some reasons why we love Nigerian Dwarf goats and chose to keep some in our herd.

Continue reading →

24 Comments

Posted in Animals

Tagged , , , , , ,