How Raising Meat on the Small Homestead Makes Sense

Raising meat on your homestead is not only doable, it’s a more ethical choice than visiting the grocery store. When managed properly, you can grow meat animals to better steward your land in a cost effective way. It’s good for you, the earth, the animal, and your wallet.

The Facts on Raising Meat

Raising animals that you love and care for as a meat source may seem somewhat contradictory to my friends and family living in the suburbs. In fact, I’ve heard several times over,

“I couldn’t eat it if I named it.”

or

“How can you say that you love it if you can kill it?”

and even the kindest of responses:

“I respect what you’re doing, and I love a good steak too, but I couldn’t do what you do.”

and there’s plenty more.

Let’s remove the emotional aspect of raising meat and just look at the facts. We are so very blessed in our culture to be faced with making food choices several times a day. I can hit a drive through for a burger or pull some of my own ground beef out of my freezer.

Animals died in both scenarios so that I can eat.

The fast food beef lived in a CAFO (concentrated animal feeding operation), with very little attention from humans. It survived filthy conditions in a pen without grass, packed like sardines with hundreds of other beef animals.

My beef lived its days on hay and grass, with some grain and alfalfa treats, and chin scratches. He got to run and play with others in his herd, kicking up his heels when the cool evening breeze blew. He was brushed and pet, hugged and sung to. We love on our cows that are going to be beef one day just like we love the animals that we intend to keep. 

(Side note to my vegan friends: Several animals die every time monocrop foods are grown and harvested to support the vegan diet as well. You just didn’t see it happen. Just like for my omnivore friends, this same message applies.)

But Raising Meat is Emotional

They deserve to be treated as kindly and humanely as the rest. Just because its purpose is different, doesn’t mean that I should neglect or abuse the animal. To become detached in such a way that makes killing an animal easier on my heart is delusional.

It’s not that killing is easy (it’s far from easy), but we should be able to realize the impact that our diet has. When you’ve loved an animal from birth until death, losing them hurts. Slaughter days hurt just as much, but we remember that they are serving their purpose. We gave them the best life possible. We somberly thank God and the animal for its life every time, and then we use as much of the animal as we can.

That is a connection to our food that we’ve only recently lost in the grand timeline of humanity existing. It wasn’t very long ago that raising meat was just something everyone did. There was no grocery store. There was only hard work in gardens with good management of animals, raising for food for everyone.

Small Homesteads Options to Raising Meat

If you have a small homestead, even an acre, you have so many options for raising meat. Here are the tried and true animals I recommend:

• Chickens for eggs and meat
• Quail, Ducks, other Fowl
• Meat Rabbits
• Pigs for meat and lard
• Sheep & Goats
• Raising Beef

Raising Meat Chickens

I would start with something small, such as broiler chickens. The cornish cross meat chickens are fast growing, and puts a lot of meat in your freezer at one time.

You can easily raise your own meat chickens on an acre by using a mobile chicken tractor. Dragging them around your land will not only benefit the birds, but they’ll add plenty of natural fertilizer to improve your green grass. Of course, a static chicken coop can be nice to have as well, but be prepared to clean it out as part of your regular homestead chores.

​There are more sustainable chicken breeds that you can keep if you’re looking to close your supply loop. Delawares and Australorps are few good example of dual purpose birds for meat and eggs.

Order day-old chicks in early spring, give them a good life, and fill your freezer. Then do it again next year. 

Other Fowl for Meat

Quail, ducks, and turkey are excellent sources of small animal protein that you can raise in your own backyard. They’re good for meat as well as eggs, and provide the homesteader with a little variety in their meat freezer.

Since quail are such small birds, they really don’t need much space. They have a high turnover rate, maturing from baby chicks to full grown in just six short weeks. You can easily get on a cycle of hatching eggs in an incubator for continuously raising batches of quail for meat.

Muscovy ducks are an invasive species because they breed so rapidly. They also happen to bring amazing dark breast meat, and have been affectionately dubbed “the filet mignon of ducks.” In Florida, you can collect feral muscovy for a free meat source to get your flock started. Just be sure you’re allowed to enter the property from which you collect them.

Turkey takes a little longer to grow out, but bring a lot more meat per animal. Getting more at once is nice if you’re trying to fully stock pantry shelves or freezers.

Sheep & Goats for Meat Too

Is the grass getting too thick and hard to keep up? Thank you, healthy chickens. Let’s add in a couple of sheep or goats to help manage the vegetative growth you’ve found. You can rotate them with electric net fencing, giving them a new patch of grass daily.

Sheep and goats are excellent at cleaning up that lush vegetation, and converting energy to meat. Don’t panic. People all over the world eat goat meat, (we Americans seem to be the only squeamish society to say no to goat meat.)

Did someone say lamb? You bet. The price of lamb is usually at least double the cost of beef, making it a delicacy on your homestead menu. Have you tried lamb once, and decided it’s too “gamey” or “strong” of a flavor? I present to you the hair sheep. We run Katahdin sheep so that we don’t have to shear them. They shed their hair on their own. The hair sheep breeds produce less lanolin, making a milder, sweeter lamb meat.

When we use the term “lamb,” don’t fret. Feeder lambs are not harvested until they’re full sized. This just happens to be within their first year of life.

Raising Meat Rabbits

Rabbits are one of the easiest things we’ve ever raised for meat. They were the fastest way to get several pounds of meat put away on very little money.

You can keep rabbits in a tractor type cage to move around your property too, but you’ll need to cover the bottom with hardware cloth. Interestingly, you can keep a couple of rabbits and a couple of egg laying chickens together in the same tractor.

Raising Pigs

For a slightly larger animal, consider pigs. Yorkshires and Hampshires grow faster than most, but the quality meat is less than favorable. These are the breeds that factory farms like to keep for their quick turn over.

Lard pigs, such as the Mulefoot or American Guinea Hog, take longer to grow. They also provide more fat than meat. While fat is a valuable resource for the homestead kitchen, we’re looking for protein.

Heritage breeds like Durocs, Red Wattles, and Berkshires grow fast enough to provide a lot of pork. They also provide a decent amount of fat. These hogs hit the sweet spot for home grown pork.

Raising meat pigs (or lard pigs) is easy enough to do on a small homestead. You can raise them in a fixed 10′ X 10′ pen with deep bedding. Alternatively, you can raise them on large fields or paddocks. They will root around, so your fences had better be sure.

My favorite part about keeping pigs on our small farm is that they’re the garbage disposals of the homestead. They can convert garden waste, acorns, kitchen scraps, and cow manure into bacon. That’s right. Pigs will spread and eat cow manure. They actually get a fair amount of nutrition from it, and it doesn’t make them sick.

Running pigs in electric netting fences after cows makes sense.

Raising Beef

Cows, even mini cows, will need a little more land, especially when you’re considering sustainability. Of course, if you’re willing to continuously bring in hay to feed them, you’re free to keep large animals on smaller lots. That will get expensive though. Consider small breeds that convert feed to muscle more efficiently through genetics, like the Dexter or Shorthorn.

Raising Meat in HOAs, Local Regulations

Perhaps you’ve decided to take the plunge into raising meat for your family, but you’re concerned that you aren’t allowed. If you live in neighborhood regulated by a homeowner’s association, you may have a difficult time raising meat at home. Check the by-laws of your association to see what’s allowed. 

Even if you’re not bound by a homeowner’s association, make sure that your local zoning regulations will allow you to keep livestock. Government entities may have blanket policies for your town or county that you need to comply with. If you aren’t sure, check with your zoning department for possible rules and regulations.

Quail and rabbits are usually exempt from such restrictions as they aren’t typically considered livestock. I’ve seen friends raise each of these in cages in their garages, and then compost the manure and bedding for their backyard gardens. Fantastic.

Another option is to make a deal with a friend without the restrictions that you’re up against. Offer to share a portion of the meat with them if they give you the space to raise the meat on their property.

Last, be the change. If you want to change rules and regulations, go through the proper channels to make that happen. Propose amendments, gather signatures, and argue your case before the proper governing entities.

Infrastructure for Raising Meat

The single most important thing that you can do before raising meat, is to have your infrastructure in place first. Fences, coops, heat lamp, shelters, electric, water, whatever you might need should be in place first. 

Raising Meat for Your Family

There are several online charts available for the amounts that you might grow to feed your family. However, I don’t put much stock into them. There are simply too many variables besides the “per person” amount to raise. My family eats a lot of red meat and we hunt for deer. We don’t need to raise as much chicken as our neighbor, who only eats white meat.

Just get started raising meat and learn along the way if you’re raising enough or not. If you prepare one chicken for dinner once a week, then you need about 52 chickens for the year. You can do those all at once and get it over with in 8 weeks, or you can divide that in half and raise them twice in the year. It’s easy to determine how much of the smaller animals you might need.

How Much Meat for Our Family 

Beef and pork are a different story. We know that a year’s worth of meat for us will be about half a beef, one and half hogs, and 35 chickens. It took us some time to understand how long it takes us to work through a 1200 pound beef.

We also supplement with hunting and fishing.

The Actual Numbers to Raising Meat

When you are calculating how much meat you’re going to get from an animal, you need to understand how many pounds of food you’ll get after processing. This will help you raise your larger animals to the desired weight for your family to stock up on meat.

It’s a good idea to read through all of the terminology if this is your first time considering raising meat.

Supplementing With Hunting & Fishing

In addition to the beef, pork, and chicken that I mentioned, we hunt and fish to add meat to our freezer. If you can’t raise your own food, I encourage you to step out into the hunting world as an alternative. 

Our family adds the meat of three to four deer to the freezer each year, and we are a house of wild turkey hunters. Not only does this save on the time commitment that raising meat takes, we’ve created a ton of family time in the great outdoors while hunting and fishing.

Growing Extra

A great way to offset the cost of raising meat for your own family is to grow extra to sell. If you’re going to grow a pig, grow two pigs instead and sell one. 

We’ve done this time and time again to help recoup the cost that we put into raising meat for our own family. We end up with a better meat product for ourselves, and the grocery budget benefits. You could end up raising your own meat for next to nothing, or totally free, after you sell the extra.

The meat that we sell is always to satisfied buyers who either can’t or don’t want to raise their own, but they appreciate the better product than that of the grocery store.

Processing Your Meat

​Some things to keep in mind when considering processing your own meat:

• Can you do it yourself?

You can certainly process your own small game yourself. You just need the right tools and time commitment for the job. Take a class, ask a friend to teach you, and jump in. This is yet another forgotten skill that you can hone over time, getting better and better. 

Larger animals can be done at home too. You will need the means to properly rest meat to tenderize at a low temperature to prevent spoilage. Look into building a hanging room to do this on your own. Again, your cuts will not be uniformly perfect, but you’ll learn as you go. The next time will be better.

• Scheduling appointments

If you choose to take your animals to a meat processing facility, you will need to book out your appointment well in advance. Since the Covid 19 pandemic, we’ve seen such a large shift in the food supply chain. More folks are looking for farm to consumer meat options. That means the processors are booked up for several months. In Florida, we’re making appointments for our beef and pork 8-12 months in advance.

• Added Cost and Loss

Butchers usually charge by the hanging weight of a large animal, plus a kill fee, a vacuum sealing fee if chosen, a USDA inspector fee if you want to privately sell cuts of meat, and other random small fees that all add up.

There’s also some obvious waste such as unusable organs, head, feet, and more. Typically, you can count on getting back 60% of the live weight of the animal in wrapped meat.

Support a Local Farmer

If none of this is possible for you, I encourage you to support a local farmer. Most times, small farms will raise animals with unconventional methods, like free range laying hens for example. They offer their animals more square feet in their pens, provide fresh grass, and choose selective breeding practices.

The small farmer will look after more than the basic needs of the animals because s/he can’t afford to lose any. His/her bottom dollar is reflected by positive animal husbandry.

Conclusion to Raising Meat on Your Homestead

The ethical choice of managing your own meat animals is a practical skill that anyone can learn. I encourage you to pick one thing to start this year. Learn about it and jump in, providing your family with a better choice to sustainable living.

You may also enjoy reading How to Castrate Pigs Quick & Easy on the Farm

Happy Homesteading!

Donna and her family have been homesteading for most of their 20+  years together in some shape or fashion. She currently lives on their 20 acre farm where they grow as much food as possible. What started as a just a few laying hens, has grown into large gardens, pastured poultry, pork, and lamb. They are continuously evolving their small farm to not suit their family’s needs, but also providing to their local community. Donna’s favorite part of the family farm is her self-built micro-dairy, where she gets to love on dairy cows while serving her local community. Milking, cheesemaking, and processing dairy have become the soul of their homestead and the center of their farm.