|
|
Post by silverseeds on Nov 12, 2009 0:43:05 GMT -5
Okay it will likely be awhile before I get any animals. If I could get any animal it would be camels. They can eat anything, go longer without water then a horse, produce milk, they also can carry heavy loads, not that I ever plan to carry loads by camel. Im not positive it is true, but despite them being known as mean, I have read they will defend you like a dog would.
Anyway thats not likely but some turkeys, chickens or goats might be.....(if I can find a way to protect them, and at my land that might mean indoors. I mean theres coyotes, mountain lions, fox, bears, bobcats...... Id need a 12 foot wall or something.) camels could fend for themselves dang it!!!!!
so anyway how many do I need of each to have a safe breeding population?
|
|
|
|
Post by silverseeds on Nov 12, 2009 10:32:15 GMT -5
Yes I know how much camels cost. Why do you think I kept saying I dont think I can get them? It would be neat though. Im not wondering how to care for them... I just want toknow how many I need so I dont mess up the genetics..... this i just so I can have that tidbit of knowledge in the back of my mind....  |
|
|
|
Post by lavandulagirl on Nov 12, 2009 17:23:52 GMT -5
Are you thinking of breeding just to sustain your supply of food, or for breed/show conformation?
|
|
|
|
Post by silverseeds on Nov 12, 2009 17:41:45 GMT -5
well I just want to know how many I would need so I dont mess up the genetics...
Like If I had one male one female I would have major issues, a few generations later, I would assume....
I would guess I need 20 or more.......
|
|
|
|
Post by mjc on Nov 12, 2009 18:14:57 GMT -5
If you aren't after preserving a particular breed or show quality...don't worry to much about it. Get one rooster and several hens (different/mixed breeds) and occasionally replace the rooster. After a couple of generations, you'll have all 'mutts' and it won't matter too much.
|
|
|
|
Post by Darth Slater on Nov 12, 2009 23:46:19 GMT -5
Okay it will likely be awhile before I get any animals. If I could get any animal it would be camels. They can eat anything, go longer without water then a horse, produce milk, they also can carry heavy loads, not that I ever plan to carry loads by camel. Im not positive it is true, but despite them being known as mean, I have read they will defend you like a dog would. Anyway thats not likely but some turkeys, chickens or goats might be.....(if I can find a way to protect them, and at my land that might mean indoors. I mean theres coyotes, mountain lions, fox, bears, bobcats...... Id need a 12 foot wall or something.) camels could fend for themselves dang it!!!!! so anyway how many do I need of each to have a safe breeding population? Hey Silver! The at the begining of your post I thought you were looking to get married ;D |
|
|
|
Post by silverseeds on Nov 13, 2009 19:01:20 GMT -5
okay what about horses or goats???
|
|
|
|
Post by peppereater on Nov 15, 2009 3:57:39 GMT -5
If you haven't been around goats at all, NOT a good idea. They can be stubborn, troublesome, and yes, they do eat anything. We had a smallish (not a true miniature) female, and she literally ate most of the vinyl siding off of one wall of our house. She could escape almost any enclosure, and when she did, she destroyed shrubs, trees, potted plants, garden plants...
Chickens are very easy to keep and can be kept safe with an adequate fence, or a good livestock dog like a Great Pyrennies (sp?). Just a few provide easily a dozen eggs a week consistently for 9 months a year or more (they tend to lay very few eggs in winter in most regions, based mostly on daylength, but temperatures are somewhat of a factor.)
Guineas can be quite versatile, and prolific layers, but they have some issues. They will roost high up in trees if permitted to, thus avoiding most predators (besides owls.)
They can be noisy, a bit destructive of vegetable gardens, and may hide their egg clutches up to as many as 3 dozen or more, which hatch out all at once, within 24 hours once they decide to incubate them.Smallish eggs with slightly more yoke to white than chicken eggs, and delicious.
Horses are prone to injure themselves, eat huge amounts of feed, and provide nothing but recreation and fertilizer. Need an expensive hobby? Want to support your local vet? Go right ahead, heh. Their manure is first-rate fertilizer, though.
We have horses, cattle, dogs, and cats. Dogs make good early-warning devices and excellent companions, cats are intelligent roommates and do a superb job of eliminating pests from mice to spiders, scorpions, you name it.
Chickens were extremely worthwhile, but eventually got wiped out by a particularly crafty raccoon. We had a small population of them for years before that. We're waiting until spring to get more, and we very much miss the taste of eggs that don't come from a factory.
|
|
|
|
Post by dirtsunrain on Nov 15, 2009 7:57:55 GMT -5
If you want to mess around with genetics, try rabbits. You can get a few generations in a short time and you can eat your results. The manure and urine is good for the garden too.
One buck and 4 does wouldnt take up much space. You could kept them penned up away from the beasts of fang and claw pretty easily.
The only problem I see is where you live. Your climate could be a bit uncomfortable for bunnies.
My fascination with genetics began as a child when I visited the Toronto Science Centre. They had a room full of black and white guinea pigs. They had the cages arranged by F1, F2, F3, F4 etc generations. I remember going home home and bugging my folks to buy me guinea pigs so I create the experiment. They bought me One.
|
|
|
|
Post by Alan on Nov 15, 2009 21:15:02 GMT -5
I agree with a lot of things said above, but have some ideas/experiences of my own to share.
Regarding poultry- if one is not too awful concerned with keeping a line pure and is more interested in productive egg layers and meat birds then the best bet is to start with a wide genetic base which includes birds of all the characteristics which fit ones needs. With a bit of genetic guess work one can even breed a "named mutt" essentially, a new and genetically diverse breed of chicken which fits your needs. Chickens are easy to breed and when taken care of properly it is easy to get a couple of filial generations in a year. This has been my method, basically a uncontrolled (minus culling weaklings) mass cross of birds including Ameracauna, Aracauna, Production Reds, Cukoo Marans, and Salmon Fovorell. The offspring are amazing meat and egg producers and better than anything that I would find at a hatchery, they are also very well adapted to my conditions on this farm and I hardly ever loose a bird.
Starting with a genetic base such as this will give you the ability to select for a wide range of features which you will be looking for in your selection criteria, also starting with this wide of a base you will not have to worry too much about genetic bottlenecking for years and years and such a worry can be eased by simply adding a bird of your required genetic wants into the flock. A good starting point that is small would be 10 hens and two roosters, use two different types of roosters to widden your genetic base, but make sure you have a large enough area for the roosters to escape from one another or you may end up with some fights on your hands.
As far as inbreeding goes, with poultry it can be a concern, but don't fret about it overly so as many breeds recognized by organizations are highly inbred, many such as true Cuckoo Marans could not be bred to anything other than another relative even if it comes from the other side of the country given the limited genetics of such gene pools. Personally, I could care less about breeding to "type" or "recognized type" so to speak. I feel that this type of work is eroding our animals genetic base completely.
Regarding Turkeys (pay attention here silver, these birds will do well for you).
A lot has been said here and other places around the net about turkeys, parasites, keeping them with chickens, black head, and how hard in general they are to raise.
A lot of it can be way overblown and they can be easier to raise than is often made out.
Hens will wonder and so will toms, they are curious birds and you do have to keep an eye on them, but they are easy to heard back into their area.
To stop hens from wondering off into a field to lay eggs, find some large boxes or scrap lumber and place it close to their coop or even in the coop and they will lay a nest in this area and stick around, some will wonder but not far.
To keep them from getting in the habbit of roosting outside in a tree, build a simple roost somewhere right next to your coop, every night at dusk make it a point to get the young poults to go back into their coop, eventually they will learn to protest this, but since they associate the coop with food they will stick around it and likely use the roost next to the coop as opposed to trees. Go out at dusk and "shoo" them off the roost, heard them into the coop and do a head count.
Taking care of poults can be a bit difficult. DO NOT FEED THEM MEDICATED CHICKEN FEED. If your going to feed them medicated feed, get 28% game bird feed, or use a high protein ration and use red pepper flakes for deworming.
Regarding parasites. I worm using red pepper flakes, once a week, I mix five or six containers worth with the feed for all the birds once they are grown once a week. Also, red pepper flakes will kill the dreaded "Black head" that everyone speaks of (which is why people will tell you not to put turkeys with chickens, but it isn't that big a deal) and once every couple of weeks, spread some stall dry or diatomacious earth on the floor of your coop, this will keep down external parasites. Also spread this anywhere where you notice the birds dirtbathing. This approach to parasites works. Trust me.
Guineas.....the same things said about turkeys apply to guineas exactly.
Free ranging Turkeys, Guineas, and Chickens. Once the birds reach the age of two months it is generally safe to start weaning the game birds off of the high protein feed and switch them over to simple cracked corn if you have plenty of range for them to discover and hunt down their higher levels of needed protein, which trust me, they will indeed find.
Turkeys, at least here, seem to do excellent on free range and I've had no real issue with them loosing weight from it, in fact, they are 100 times healthier than the local birds I have seen which are held in confinement. Perhaps they are not as fat, but their weigh gain even on range is amazing. Perhaps this had a lot to do with what I have chosen to keep and what I have chosen to cull, but getting them to size between May and November is not an issue. Also make not mistake, turkeys can be slaughtered at almost any age and used for anything a chicken is. A turkey the size of a chicken is actually quite a tasty bird and completely different from a turkey like one would eat at Thanksgiving.
One piece of advice I can give anyone getting into livestock......
Don't even think about it unless you can stomach the idea of survival of the fittest and also deal with the idea that on your farm you are at the top of the food chain and will at some point have to make the decision to either cull for food purposes, overpopulation purposes, or ocassionally even "waste" a bird because of a debilitating injury, these are just a fact of life and having a good fire arm on hand of sufficient force to take care of any issues that come to hand including putting down an animal or killing a predator is a fact that one should seriously take into consideration.
Regarding rabbits:
I have just entered the world of raising meat rabbits, once again working from the idea of a wide genetic base I am now working with Harliquinns, New Zealands, Californians, and Silver Fox types.
Two Bucks and 6 Does total.
Plantsnoobin Karen would be the reliable source to ask about rabbits, though from what I have read, inbreeding, as with all mamals can be a serious issue. However from some research I am reading at the moment it seems that in some instances that it might be ok to breed mother/father to son/daughter but to never ever under any circumstance breed a brother and sister. Rabbit genetics are a new area of learning for me and one which I don't imagine I will master overnight or even come up with an easy solution for dealing with at any point in the near future, though if one were in a pinch I would presume catching a wild rabbit and adding some new genetics, even if only temporarily, to the heard wouldn't be an issue, also, rabbits do breed rather quickly and as such rabbits can usually be bought cheeply via flee markets, pet stores, craigslist, and so forth without much of an investment.
Sorry for the book guys. Please keep discussing Livestock, as I have repeated many times over the past year I feel we should all be discussing Livestock, Water Catchment, Orchard Crops, and Mushrooms much more than what we are, these are our new fronteirs as a group I believe.
|
|
|
|
Post by silverseeds on Nov 15, 2009 22:56:12 GMT -5
Thank you very much everyone, this has given me alot to consider..... I think I just made the decision..... turkeys or chickens and some rabbits. going to be awhile though. the reason for the questions about minimum numbers are for a just in case scenario. I would of course try to vary the genetics, for the same reasons I want to with plants. Its just good to know the limits. Someday though I am going to get camels, Im serious. No offence to horses, but camels just fit in better here. |
|
|
|
Post by flowerpower on Nov 16, 2009 4:39:28 GMT -5
If you really want a camel, did you think about getting llamas or alpacas? They are members of the camel family. Since they are from the Andes, they can take pretty harsh conditions. They will also protect any other livestock around them. Also the wool brings pretty high prices when they are trimmed.
|
|
|
|
Post by mnjrutherford on Nov 16, 2009 7:13:34 GMT -5
I was thinking along those very same lines myself Lynn. The drawback there; however, would be environmental. Llamas and alpacas are adapted to high, cold, mountain regions. Camels might be more suited to New Mexico. I do believe we had a camel type animal on the continent in pre-history. It would be interesting to return the species to use in the area.
"Hey Honey! I'm taking the camel to work today, don't worry if I'm a bit late, he might stop to spit at the cars..." ;o)
|
|
|
|
Post by silverseeds on Nov 16, 2009 7:16:01 GMT -5
I knew some alpacas. Very neat animals......
|
|
