Raising meat in city limits

[Compost King]

Quail and Rabbit are the easiest meats to raise in an urban environment. Both are also easier to process than chickens.

 

[SomeChickinTN]

am not urban, but rabbits are usually classified as pets not live stock, i would like to get into them but still have a hard time killing livestock. (yet no issue with wild game) they seem to provide a lot of meat in a small space and minimum effort.

also have you looked into fish? like small scale aquaculture can provide a ton of fish to eat (depending on species like tilapia) where you can breed and raise them to a plate size in a year.

I have thought about it, but I'm not even sure how that would work in my yard. I can't dig a pond, and no part of the yard is level...

 

[itsasmallfarm]

i know the feeling, can't have a pond here either.

i looked into raising fish in barrels or IBC totes seem to work pretty well with catfish and tilapia.

 

[MountainGaurdian]

You can always check into local livestock auctions. Most every area has livestock auctions where the farmers take their stock to sale. I grew up going to the auctions as my dad was always buying cattle and horses for ranchers that he worked with.

I go to the local auction to buy hogs, I can buy over sized boars and sows in the 600 to 900 pound range for literally 1 penny a pound. Our local sale yard has a small animal sale the last Wednesday of every month. One can go buy sheep, goats, hogs, even chickens and whatnot on that day each month.

If you can't raise them on your place you could buy them on the cheap at the sale yard and just slaughter them for your meat. We are out in the middle of nowhere on a large acreage but I found that I cannot raise hogs for anywhere near the price the hog farmers are so rather than raise them I simply buy them at the sale now for less than a tenth the cost I was raising them for.

As for an egg supply unless you are wanting to get into selling eggs you don't actually need very many chickens. We have about 17 or 18 hens laying right now and we are getting right about 12 to 13 dozen eggs a month.