Now that the sun is out, I'll have to head outside with the camera! Though, I wouldn't say that any of my animals "work".
But we have a lot of them. And if I were more organized at it, I could potentially break even--though I don't know as though I would ever make money, much less good money, on the animals I have now. I have too many pets--namely, the 6 horses--that would negate any profit I made from any of the others.
I do breed a few different breeds of chickens, and I sold a good deal of eggs this past spring from my Polish. That helped to buy
some feed, but certainly didn't make me any profit. After packing materials, trips to the post office, and shipping costs, I don't make too much on a set of eggs. But I enjoy doing it. It's fun to wrap up eggs and ship them off to all parts of the U.S. And I love it when people keep me updated on their hatches! Now, if I were more organized, I might be able to break even with the chickens. But I have my iron in too many fires. I have large fowl Polish, bantam Polish, Ameraucanas, and Cuckoo Marans...and I'm trying to start a line of white Marans. If I kept it down to just a breed or two, I wouldn't have so many young birds growing out here (translation--
feeding all of these godzilla chicks for months on end!) trying to see who are the best birds to keep for breeding. That would keep my costs down a lot (I spend a
lot of money feeding chickens, only to sell 90% of them in the end, because I don't want to sell chicks because I can't tell what kind of quality they are at that point) and I could probably do better with them financially--though I don't think I would ever turn a profit, but the hobby could at least pay for itself.
We have Nigerian Dwarf goats, too. Now these guys make the most sense out of all my animals as real "homesteading" animals. I'll go snap some pics--I have a cranky toddler who needs to get outside
so I'll update my post about the goats later.
ETA: Here are some pics of my goats and the farm.
My first Nigerian doe, Rayna, who I was really hoping was pregnant but came back into season today--darnit!
Honey, being shy as always:
Roxy, Honey's daughter, playing on a tree we just had taken down:
One of our goat sheds. This was actually built to be a hog shed by the original owners of the farm. I love it because the entire thing has a nice concrete floor--every couple of weeks I sweep it out, then hose the whole thing down to keep it nice and clean. The whole thing is attached to a very sturdily built paddock that opens up into a small pasture. I typically leave the gate open so the goats come and go as they please, and can graze/browse whenever they want. But I have the option of locking them up in the smaller area if I need to, such as if I want to rotate their pastures.
A closer shot of the fencing that works best for us for the goats. Three boards of wood plank with 2" x 4" welded wire fencing attached to the
inside--and then another wooden plank across the
bottom. Four foot tall altogether (I'd probably have to have it a bit taller, maybe 5', if I had standard sized goats) Keeps he goats from pushing out underneath of the fence, and looks nice--if you're not too close.
This fence is starting to look its age. We also have 5-strand high-tensile electric wire around the entire open areas of pasture, for the horses. My other goat pasture, the one attached to the shed in the previous pic, is done in this electric fence. It usually contains the goats, because the wires are close enough together--but it's not the best solution for them. It's just cheaper. This wooden fence/welded wire combination is really much better.
A picture of some of my chicken breeding pens. They need some work, but so far they are working well. They are 8' long X 4' wide (each side) and 8' tall, with 1/4" hardware cloth all around. I like that I can easily walk into them, and that they are very spacious for the birds. I don't like that we have a lot of wasted vertical space--the next ones I make will be 6' tall. Still plenty of room for me and the chickens, but we'll save a bit on materials. You can kind of see a couple of my small "kindergarten" pens for chicks and growing birds on the left/foreground. Those are 4' x 4' boxes, 2' tall, also with hardware cloth. I have several of these, and they are quite handy. They make great brooders, too, and are easy to move around and clean. I use wood shavings (deep litter method in the larger pens) in all of my pens. These are in a very large equipment shed--we're in the process of cleaning a lot of junk out of it right now, and when we're finished I will have 2 full bays for chicken pens. My plan is to have 6 of these large breeding pens and room for several smaller pens.
I'd show you some pictures of my barn but it's embarrassingly messy!
We're planning a big barn clean up project for fall, once it's cooler and the wasps/hornets/bees aren't active (I'm highly allergic and we've got quite a few stinging critters living in the barn right now).
