Rabbits, Goats, Peacocks?

[Chick_In_The_Burbs]

One thing I would love to do, if I had the space and zoning, would be goats. You can get male dairy goats really cheap often as not. I was going to use them for an all natural brush clearing service. Most expensive part would be transporting them to and from the job location. Wish i had heard of this when my aunt finally decided to clear out her beach houses back yard. It was fence to fence blackberry vines. Goats would have saved my dad and I some blood.

 

[Summer Rose]

I have been toying with the Goat idea. Might just do that. Thanks
My Girls seem to like their Dressing Table , LOL

 

[zazouse]

That is adorable.
Those are some spoiled babies right there they even got AC.

 

[Summer Rose]

Thanks! The AC is turned the other direction where my studio it, LOL Maybe I will start a trend, putting a mirror in the coup:>)

 

[Oregon Blues]

Summer Rose, my very best return on time and investment are my fruit trees. They are fairly inexpensive to purchase. They do require careful and precise care, but it does not take a lot of hours. The fruit crop is valuable and can be sold or bartered; fresh fruit is great to barter with because everybody wants it.

I plant the mid-size trees and pick fruit with a fruit pole. I need the larger root system for anchorage from my heavy winds. But you can plant dwarf fruit trees and never have to get on a ladder to care for them or to pick fruit. Also, serious commercial fruit growers plant the smallest dwarfs and train them to grow on trellises like grapes. That makes for easy care and easy harvest and the trellis prevents wind damage.

If you are getting a dozen eggs a day, you probably have too many chickens. I'm not suggesting you get rid of pets, but rather that you be cautious about adding any more.

I added up all my expenses for the duck eggs and they cost me about $4 a dozen to produce. You have to add in the cost of chicks, brooding, raising before they lay, the time in the winter when they don't lay, and even the cost of keeping the old pets who have stopped laying but have not stopped eating. By selling purebred quality hatching eggs, I can get over $4 a dozen. I know that some people are able to get $4 a dozen for eating eggs. But unless you can sell eggs for more than your total cost, all you are doing is paying part of someone else's grocery bill, which increases the cost of every dozen eggs that you keep for yourself.

Thus I say: be very truthful with yourself about what the eggs cost and if they can't be sold for a nice profit, keep the numbers down to what you can use for yourself and maybe the occasional gift.

 

[Summer Rose]

Wow, Some really, really good ideas! We use to have apple trees but they were so old they stopped producing and hubby cut them down.
Think I might start doing some Google'ing LOL on the subject of fruit trees. I think we are in for some possible bad times and it would be
good to have food to Barter and if no bad times it would be good anyway to share or eat fruit:>) I have about an acre of property I could plant
them, then have about an acre of Woods. We use to use most all of it to ride our Go-Karts but no one but me is interested in that anymore:>(
I was only guessing as to how many eggs I might have a day, that is what most people told me. Hmmm Doesn't matter. Thanks for the friendship!

 

[Summer Rose]

Just a footnote. We read so many suggestions so I want to add that my Girls sure love cooked oatmeal in the morning!!!