Sooo much pooping

[Vikki56]

I confess I am a bit of a dreamer, and most of my dreams these days seem to centre around having a bit of land (to be fair a fair few acress) rescuing ex-batts (cause this lot have changed my life) and maybe doing a bit of pure breed/cross breading on the side. So my question is does anyone on here do that? And is it viable? Significant other have discussed this multiple times (him: wouldn't you be happier just being a farmer? It seems to be what you are good at) but I say I probably wouldn't have the hardened attitude to 'stock' that is needed. Plus I think to afford any land we'd need to move to Wales but I'm pretty in love with Oxfordshire. Then I saw this http://www.earthtrust.org.uk/Our-work/Discovering/farmstep.aspx which is pretty much what I was asking for but I'm not sure I could do that without the financial support of my full time job & now I'm all confused, can you tell? Thoughts?

 

Vikki x

[Redwing]

my smallholding life would fall apart if I didnt have my job to support it

 

I do have the hardened approach to the stock and am good with the figures when it comes to feed and bedding etc but there is no way we could make it work to pay the bills even if we had no mortgage at all.

 

My chickens are a hobby and cost me money rather than make me money

 

I also enjoy my full time job so cant imagine leading a more lonely life and when I drive home after a frustrating day I have all my animals and birds to see to and love to potter about for hours

 

Mind you its awfully hard in the winter!

 

With regards to the link you have posted it certainly looks interesting, if you have no (or a small) mortgage and your OH's wage coming in then it would be worth exploring maybe

[wannabe smallholder]

I'm afraid I have nothing constructive to add only that as my forum name suggests I too think about such a life, especially after a horrid day at work. I hope some day your dream can come true xxx

[Luvachicken]

I hope your dream comes true too.

I was just day dreaming about the couple that have just won all those euro millions.

I would buy a nice house in the countryside with lots of land and then buy loads of Omlet cubes and runs and open up a chicken hotel...................................oh yeah, and a sky blue mini

[wannabe smallholder]

I know! And some goats to milk and make my own cheese, bees for honey and of course the apple and pear orchard for the cider!!! As you can tell I have thought about it once or twice!! Xxx

[craftyhunnypie]

I'm afraid you need ' another' job as well as Small holding. The 'other' job helps pay for all the things a Smallholding requires.. fencing, feeds, vets, housing, bla bla. Just Smallholding entirely is not viable! Shame, but true.

Also, on a Smallholding, the best bit of advice, is never to put your eggs in one basket. So have sheep, pigs, chickens, ducks, goats etc etc. Don't just have for example..chickens. It only takes a major fox attack or disease outbreak & your business is gone!

Emma.x

[cyclonetog]

Very good point Emma.

A guy at work recently told me that a business local to him lost 1500 pheasants in one night to a Mink attack!

(yes one thousand five hundred).

[Lewis]

I work for a place selling chickens but there is much more to it than that and it take a large scale to make it profitable, also years to build up a reputation, customer base etc. They have another part to the business which isn't related to poultry which helps bring on money.

Tbh I don't think it would be a viable thing to start a fresh as there is so much competition around and I'm not sure how long the chicken-craze will continue growing for!

 

Farming/Smallholding is great when the sun is shining but isn't always so great when its snowing, water pipes have frozen and there's mud everywhere! There would also be issue of excess cockerels and ill chickens that you would have to deal with.

 

I think I'm right in saying that you've only had chickens since Christmas time, so I'd say if you want to try at breeding maybe do as much as you can now while you're still working, see how it works for you and go from there

[Lesley]

I agree with all the others. We took on an 8 acre smallholding and needed a decent income to keep it all going. It would be difficult to make any income from 8 acres even if we turned to intensive farming, which we'd never do. The most we manage is to cover our feed costs ( and provide 'free' meat for ourselves) and hard work provides most of our own fruit and veg thereby keeping shopping costs down.

 

Our financial position changed drastically 18 months ago and so we've had to downsize the number of animals we keep - it isn't just the feed costs but the constant threat of potential vet bills, we felt it wasn't fair to keep the number of animals we had and perhaps (almost certainly) not be able to pay for a vet should we have problems.

 

We take cade lambs now instead of lambing from our own ewes and our two beautiful Aberdeen Angus heifers had to go to the abattoir instead of having calves which had been our plan. We do take a risk with our lambs as we take them on to Hoggett rather than selling them as lamb, we keep them until the following year as the flavour is better. The extra that we make on them being slightly larger doesn't really cover the cost of extra feed over the winter but they do taste superb.

 

Our hens haven't been happy this summer and I doubt if egg sales will even cover the cost of feed - last year we had so many eggs to sell,,,,this year, very few after we've sorted out ourselves and family.

 

Despite all that we still love the lifestyle and are doing what we can to hang on to it.

[Vikki56]

Thanks for the advice everyone, other half and I have decided this isn't viable for the time being but I think its driven home that I maybe need a new job, something that challenges me a bit more (but still within the relative safety/warmth of the office). Then I can keep the girls in the style they have become accustomed to

 

Vikki x