How we raise our own Meat & Dairy! (Regenerative System)
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- Опубліковано 12 вер 2024
- Raising cows on less than 5 acres can be challenging! After 4 years of experimenting with different systems, we've landed on a rotational grazing management system that's been working so well for the health of our land and animals without taking a ton of time or resources from us. Learn all about how to raise your own cows for meat and/or dairy on a small scale!
Used in this video:
Premier1 Fencing - www.premier1su...
Minerals for our cows - We use and love Redmond Agriculture's 10 fine or 10 fine + garlic along with their conditioner. shop.redmondag...
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Milk Pail with Lid - amzn.to/3X2Vkfp
Milk Pail - amzn.to/3MjEPGU
Halter - amzn.to/4dB6n6A
Recipes:
Farmhouse Cheddar Cheese - fromscratchfar...
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Beautiful video. It left me teary eyed hearing one of your children crying as you loaded June into the trailer. But gosh, it’s real and so in touch. The cost to feed your family and do it right. You and your children will never take it for granted! Thanks for sharing!
Hey! It was a tough decision with June and we went back and forth a lot. She probably would have made a fine milk cow. We had a lot going on in our lives personally earlier this year and we missed our ideal window to get her bred. We also didn't do a great job of halter training her early enough on, so that would have been tricky to try and start with now. There were other factors too, but that's where we landed with all of it. Thanks for watching!
@@FromScratchFarmstead Thanks for taking us along your journey. It’s moving to see a family so in touch with animals and where food comes from.
As I watched this amazing video, it struck me how urban/suburban our lives have become. Our meat comes in neatly packaged containers, far removed from the reality of where the meat actually comes from. I was also reminded how important it is to buy the cleanest, antibiotic free meat we can afford. As ultra processed meat can cause health issues. I'm now thinking about sharing the purchase of a cow and buying a small freezer, to know we are getting the highest quality meat possible. Thank you for sharing your lives with us!!
Amen to all of that! Thanks for watching!
Great video! We are smaller than yall but grow enough beef for our family of four on only 1 acre of grass.
Some folks say you can’t do what we are doing but when I put up 350 pounds of beef annually for much cheaper than grocery store cost I feel like I’m doing something right. For reference, we are located in North Alabama so rainfall is good annually and we grow plenty of grass in the summer months.
For our setup, we are on a 2 year rotation buying a calf every fall and taking a heifer to butcher every fall. We only keep 2 head at a time so this provides 2 years to take a 250-300 pound calf and grow them out to a 1,000 pound animal ready to butcher. We normally receive around 350 pounds of beef back from the butcher. As stated, we don’t have any problems growing grass in summer but I understand that might not be the case in all areas. We do keep hay available year round but its consumption goes down drastically during the summer when grass is growing. I normally use around 10 4x5 round bales annually and can normally purchase these for $50-$60 per roll in my area. One of the best things I did was build a small run-in shelter with hay feeding area. This prevents the cows from wasting any hay which definitely helps keep costs lower. I also spend a little money on grain to finish them out. Our local co-op sells a mix I buy in bulk for .18 cents per pound.
Total costs come in around $1750 per animal. This includes $400 for the calf, $550 for hay, $300 for grain (corn mix) to finish and $500 for butcher cost. Getting back approx 350 pounds of beef puts me at roughly $5 per pound of beef. That’s $5 for ground beef AND steaks/roast.
Just posting to help inspire others. There are definitely some up front costs to start including fencing, panels, water trough etc but once you get started the costs annually are very reasonable considering the beef you get back.
Wow, thanks for sharing all that! Super helpful!! Thanks for watching!
Thanks for your comment! It was more like a mini feasibility and cost analysis. I had no idea you could do all that on only 1 acre of grass. Is there anyone on YT doing all that on 1 acre? Please make a video!
Awesome info here! Thank you! I’m also from Alabama!
I would do backflips if I found out you were getting south polls from Teddy Gentry in Fort Payne!
@mightyminifarm You didn't mention...vacinations....cow trailer...4x4 truck....maure management....supplies.
Your family is amazing and I love how you live! Blessings to you all!
😊 Thanks so much for watching!
This one was just what i needed!!!! I was doubting the space i have and not having a permanent fence up... but im just going to go for it! Thanks as always!
Awesome! You got this!!
All that walking changing the fences Isa great workout, and such a beautiful place to walk.
Agreed 😊 Not all farm tasks are fun, but this one is really enjoyable. Thanks for watching!
Thank you for sharing your experience! We are looking to buy a property just under 10 acres, and this is quite the encouragement.
Awesome! Glad it was helpful and we're rooting for you in your journey!!
@@FromScratchFarmstead thank you!!
Thanks so much for sharing your story. This has given me hope for the potential of raising my own food on a small, affordable acreage.
I’m grazing 10 cows on a 5 acres pasture. There grazing a 50x50 spot each day. Moved every day. We have videos too
I just discovered your channel this evening. I'm sure I will enjoy it. I'm about an hour north of Eau Claire, WI and the granddaughter of 2 small dairy farmers. Love your land and your beautiful brown eyed cows! And I share a similar name to Joelle.
Hey neighbor! 👋 I’m just north of highway 8. Grandparents were also dairy farmers 😊
Hey guys! This is great and so helpful as we are trying to learn how to rotationally graze our handful of cows as well. Just wanted to mention something I learned owning our milk cow for over a year now. Before we bought her I watched one of your milk cow videos and we were inspired. However I find that telling people “just get a halter and milk bucket and you are good to go” can be a little bit misleading. We tried to follow your advice, but as a newbie I didn’t realize that unless your cow comes already halter trained and is used to being milked this way it wouldn’t work! We had a horrible time getting her milked until we finally built a stanchion with a head lock. It’s also important to mention to look for a cow with hand milking teats! Ours has very small teats, small orifices, and produces over 7 gallons at peak. We just couldn’t do it by hand and ended up having to borrow and then buy a milking machine, which cost us over $1000. All of this makes rotationally grazing harder (having to bring her into the barn and needing a milker). Anyway, my husband and I love your videos and we always learn something new. Thank you!
Hey there! Thanks so much for sharing all this. It's a good reminder for us on the amount of detail to share with our experiences and I think this will be really helpful for others to see. And while we were "doing it", that doesn't mean everything was all rainbows and sunshine either :) There was plenty of hard and lessons learned in all of it. Thimble was a pretty ideal and well broken in cow to start with, but she was not as calm then as she is today and there was a lot of relationship and routine that still needed to be established over the following years. We get nowhere near 7 gallons daily, but Thimbles teats are pretty small and not ideal for hand milking, so we can relate there. Thanks again for sharing! Everyone's experince and setup is going to be different and I think this can can be a helpful example for others to consider.
I absolutely loved how you took a large scale principle and down-scaled it to something that worked for you. This is really inspiring as I am trying to find ways to keep livestock on our 1.8HA, or 4.5 acre, piece of land. Thanks for a great video 🌻
Read Comeback Farms by Greg Judy. He has a really wonderful system setup for temporary paddocks for his multi hundred head herds. Poly wire with geared reals, O’Brien’s step in posts, tricks for watering points. He really has a good system worked out.
One other thing to consider is co-grazing chickens with the cows to eat flies and larvae from the cows and their manure. Multi species grazing can present significant improvements to the system as a whole
Thank you for this. I'm 49 years old and my fiance is 50. I have health problems and he works outside the home full time. We are looking to buy land and are considering what would be reasonable to add to our lives to work toward partial homesteading. One of the things I'm looking at is what I'm physically able to do since my fiance will continue working outside the home.
It's extremely useful to me to see what's actually involved in raising dairy cows.
And one thing my fiance pointed out too is how hard it would be for me to have to turn away someone I've raised to the butcher. I honestly don't think I could.
As much as I really, really want to have the fresh dairy available. I think I will have to find another way to do so. Maybe someone nearby will sell us some of theirs. And my fiance will still want meat so maybe someone will want to sell us some of their beef, too.
If you have any videos about keeping chickens or ducks I'd love to see. I would really love to raise our own birds for eggs and occasional meat if I'm able to.
Hi there! Love hearing about your dreams to raise and grow your own food! Glad the video was helpful. I might have been in the same boat previously about not being sure if I could bring one of our animals to the butcher. The first time we did it was SO SO hard. It might not be for everyone, but there's also an element of joy in all of it knowing that you raised them super well. We do have some videos on both laying hens and meat chickens if you dig through our old ones. I'm sure we'll have some updated ones in the future too. All the best to you and thanks for watching!
@@FromScratchFarmstead Thank you. 😊
I am doing a similar set up for 25 goats. We have 20 acres. 10 of it usable for pasture grazing. We have them on the front 5 acres and rotational graze them, but the back five we reserve for hay to feed them during the winter and share with our neighbor as well as put on our garden (Ruth stout method is amazing for weed control!)
I wish I had your video 3 years ago when I started rotational grazing. I did it all wrong at first and still 3 years later there’s plenty of room for improvement. I got lymes disease last year and it put me out for 6 weeks. I realized then that I needed a management system that was doable if I was down. I do 10 of the netting fence panels (I use Gallagher) for the perimeter and then have slowly acquired poly wire and step in posts to section off 7 paddocks. They graze on each paddock for 4 days before moving to the next paddock. We have one central area for their shelter, milking stanchion, and catch pen. They stay up there at night and then are let out to graze during the day. I plan to further section of each paddock to come down to a 2 day rotation and eventually one day rotation. It is a work in progress. It’s making a huge difference in their health as goats are susceptible to parasites if they’re not rotated enough.
Thank you for this video. You’ve given me some wonderful ideas in how to improve our system.
Btw, we use our goats for dairy and meat, so I get it. Processing days are hard. We process them ourselves too.
I am amazed that the cows stay within the “flimsy” fencing.
The shock from electric fencing is just something that happens on a farm.
Premier One is a great company. I used to have a small herd of Registered dairy goats and bred my girls to kid in February. I pulled the babies to bottle feed,so the new buyers could buy them super early,to get them ready to show. I used Premier One heat lights for my babies stalls. Never ever worried about fire with their heat lamps. Although I did “modify” them by splitting an old water hose and placing it around the electric cord,taping it back together. I did that to prevent any goat from chewing on the cord and accidentally being electrocuted. Blessings ❣️
P.S. Just wondering….. are there any steers for sale nearby you? Around here,cattle farmers sell baby steers for almost nothing to get rid of them. Granted,raising a bottle baby is tiresome,but you have the fresh milk handy. Might be worth looking into for your next butcher day.
What you meant to say is you ran the electric cord thru *metal conduit* so the goats could not chew through and create an electrical short & fire....right?
🤦
Hey! Yes, it is amazing how much the cows respect the single-strand fencing. And that's a good tip to check out premiers heat lamps. I get nervous just using the stock ones from the farm store so I bet there's are much safer. I have heard of farms in the area having steers for sale you can raise for meat. We've not done it yet, but that could be a good option to look into for the future when the freezer needs a restock. Thanks for watching!
Where I’m at, a week old bull calf or steer has been going for $800 😮
Very informative. You are a great teacher too!
Thanks so much!!
Thank you so much for another great video. You are very inspiring for me. I love your videos and I learn a lot. With kind regards Torben Gram, a homesteader from Denmark
Hello! Thanks so much for your kind words and for watching!
I would love to live in Denmark.
Can’t wait to have my own milk! The cheese looks amazing! Waiting til my girls are 3 to breed, got my own bull this year that will be daddy. Grew up dairying, excited to get back to it on my own terms, own rules for treating the animals ❤
Great job!! We do a lot of rational with our beef cows. I've been wondering how you can wrap the wire on the post, but fiberglass makes sense now. We do polywire 1 or 2 strands with metal posts. It would ground out if we did that. Lol It's so fun taking a section of land and rotating. To watch it come back and get better. You will be a 1/3 longer on moving fence now. Great video! Hope it encourages others to try. It's so easy and fun and better for the land. Viewers go for it!
Love all this! Thanks so much for watching!
So awesome to see you cooking & making things. Can we see egg collection & how many you get in a day? God bless you all and many prayers 🙏🏻 Nurse Judi in AZ and E Minister 🙏🏻 ❤️
I would love an update video on your dairy cows and also would love tips on how you got yours so calm to be milked on pasture and with no treats! Would also love to know what you supplement your cows with mineral wise and any treats !
We have a 3yo jersey rn and we love her, rotational graze, grass fed only , with some treats while she is milked in the stanchion but she is a bit dansy and not as patient as yours! I would love tips!
Hey! Good ideas... I'm sure we'll do some updated videos around milk cows at some point. We got Thimble when she was 3 yo too and she was not as calm for us at that age. We had a lot more kicked buckets then and she'd be shifting around more. We were milking her in a barn stall at a different farm at that point and I'm not sure we could have tied her to a flimsy fence post. She's mellowed out with age, but she was also being fed some grain when we initially got her. Once we transitioned her off of grain so she wasn't eating anything during milking she calmed down a bunch. I'm not sure there's any real tips there, but hopefully she continues to calm down with age for you and as you establish more routine over time. Thanks for watching!
This was great and informative. Ty so much. I love all your videos.
Appreciate the feedback and thanks for watching!!
The flies were totally annoying me 😂 great idea, add chickens!!!😁🥳🎉🙌❤️
Your lovely children have better life than most kids in urban area. They live with nature.
I've really been enjoying your videos! Thank u for sharing your family life. :)
Thanks so much for watching!
We give them safe and happy lives and in turn they provide for us in life and death. Because of this next generations are born and life continues on.
Curious...have you thought about running chickens behind your cows to eat some of the fly larva from the cow patties to help eliminate some of the fly pressure?
Hey there! Yes, we've thought about it a decent amount! It's really what I wanted to do from the start, but we never had anything that could pull that large of a mobile coop. Now that we have our tractor, I may try and get something up and running with that next season. Stay tuned! Thanks for watching!
I love your farm! ❤ i hope one day in future i have farm like you
Thank you for the video, great information. I am curious why you processed June? Was she not able to produce milk for you? I am wanting my own milk cow and want to do the rotational grazing. Thanks again😊
❤ so helpful🔑 The end part is really a challenge to try to process, especially when its so close. 😢I suppose as you said it’s all part of the process of having a farm and feeding the family, and at least she had a peaceful & love filled & cared for life.
So helpful ❤
Thanks for watching!
We use one poly wire on spools with fiberglass rods(non step ins) amd it contains our cows and pigs.. for goats we use 2 wires....they learn fast what a hot wire is if you can train them to it inside a walled structure they cant blast through once they get shocked..I use a golf bag with shoulder straps to hold 75 rods as i walk aroind moving paddocks...grewat system 👍
Great video. I am just starting on this journey and preparing some neglected land for livestock. Someday, I hope to be where you are.
Thanks for sharing this!! Subbed
Thanks so much for watching!
Wow, amazing content at [5:15]! Totally agree with your point. Keep it up
Great info! Although I’m still not sold on electric fencing - I always look for the simplest ways of doing things on the farm and usually I’m led to how humans did things for centuries before technology you can’t repair within your local community. For example, can you repair the solar panel without going online or traveling long distance?
Hear you on that! I'd be really interested in learning more of those practices too. The other thing to consider in that is that land and liability has changed exponentially too. You used to be able to graze animals without any fence at all... some parts of the world still do. In our semi-rural area, this is the best and most reliable option I've found that's not permanent. Thanks for watching!
I’ve had a Zareba solar fencer for 5 years now. Also love Premier
They had shepherds back then. This is how they did it;)
So great! Thank you
I must have missed it, but How often are you moving the perimeter fence? You move them everyday, but how long is the space you’re giving them for the day?
I'm sure he mentioned it toward the beginning of the video (in the first third, I think?). Maybe watch again?
Hey! Woops, I think I forgot to mention that. Good catch! So I move the perimeter fence every 1-2 weeks depending on rain/weather, how many cows we have currently, etc. Since we're down one cow now, I might actually have them in their current area for longer than 2 weeks since it's just our milk cow and her calf isn't really eating much pasture yet and it's a big section. But if there's a dry stretch and the grass isn't growing much, I might need to make their daily paddocks bigger which means they'll move through it all more quickly. Nothing is fixed with it and you just kind of assess and adjust the timing and setup of things constantly. Thanks for watching!
Our cows aren't for dairy. What do you have to do with your milk before you consume it?
Raw is law
@@readyfuels17 Cool
@@CreativeMoments92 Strain the milk when you get it inside. Then load it into your containers and refrigerate.
Hey! Yep, as someone else mentioned, we just strain it, put it into jars and refrigerate. So yummy! Thanks for watching!
Was it difficult for your bodies to adapt to the change from store milk to raw? We have people with lactose issues in our family, and I feel like we'd have a hard time if we tried it lol
Great family
Great video...subscribed..
It seems like it could get pretty annoying to move around those electric fences. Do you ever plan on getting permanent fences?
About how large of a space do you use for a paddock? We have 3.5 acres and I’ve been trying to figure out how to have 1-2 cows while using the 30 day rule and I just can’t wrap my head around how to do this without having to bring in much hay
Amazing video, me and my wife want to start homesteading in NC. i have a question, how many cows do you have on those 5 acres?
Can you please share how you separate the calf at night? Also do you rent a bull or have AI?
Cool video. Do you have any deers or similiar wild animals around? We keep repairing our permanent fences because of deers (central Europe). I'm asking because I'd like to switch to electronetting.
Also what about heat and cows? I see they don't get any shade where they could hide from sun
Is it normal for the cows to be so covered with hundreds of flies and bugs nonstop??? There HAS to be a way to give them some relief. 😢
Yes! It is very normal! I think that is why they have those long, swinging tails!
Normal, yes. But also something we'd love to improve on down the road. This year in particular was much worse for flies than past years. Thanks for watching!
You mention this system for people with less land can you tell us how big the land is that you have these cows on? We want to do something similar but only have 2 acres of lush pasture.
I think he said it is 3 acres. But I was wondering if it is three acres, they would have to get about 10 days per acre in order to have 30 days to rotate through the whole thing. I was thinking it would have to be bigger per rotation area, but maybe that is enough.
Hey! We have about 5 acres total. The back pasture the cows graze on is around 3.5 acres. I'd say if your 2 acres is lush pasture, you'd be able to do something similar. Our pasture is lush in certain areas, but not so much in others. If you can divide it up into smaller daily paddocks and also have a separate sacrifice area that they can go in if the pasture needs a break, you should be able to make it work. Thanks for watching!
அழகான பதிவு வாழ்த்துக்கள் இந்தியாவில் இருந்து தமிழ் நாட்டு வாசகி அங்கு வேலை இருந்தால் சொல்லவும் பெண் வயது 43 தோட்டத்தில் வேலை பசுக்கள் பாதுகாப்பு
In my opinion it is too much work for 3 cows.
Fair enough! Definitely a lot of work, and definitely not for everyone. Our hope is to incorporate some other animals like sheep into the mix in the future to get a little more bang for our buck. Thanks for watching!
@@FromScratchFarmstead Sheeps are great animals. I love eating sheep meat and they are not crazy not like goats.
What state are you in ?
They live in Illinois.
We're in Illinois. Thanks for watching!
❤
Thật tuyệt vời 🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉❤
Please brother, I follow you on UA-cam and Instagram. Help me find a work contract on a farm. May God bless you.🇲🇦🇺🇸🇲🇦🙏🙏