Cheap Meat!

As some of you may know from reading here in the past, we consider ourselves a small homestead. We have chickens, goats, and now, a pig. We moved to this little homestead two years ago with the intention of learning to be more self sufficient, and we are constantly working toward that goal. We do not have a large amount of land, 2.5 acres in fact. But, we have found that have just a small plot has helped us to take our time in learning about all the different aspects of animal husbandry.

We just got our first pig, Piggly Wiggly, two weeks ago. We are raising her for meat, and will be butchering her with the help of a good friend toward the end of April. We are estimating that we will end up with about 123-150 lbs of meat in the freezer. We will be grinding between 75-100 pounds of the meat into sausage, or ground meat if you will. It is easier to stretch the meat farther in the ground form than in roasts we have found. We will be keeping the ribs, and probably about five three pound roasts for barbecue also, but the rest we will grind.

We are feeding dear Piggly Wiggly kitchen scraps like veggie peelings, so far carrot are her favorite. Also, she loves eating egg shells, leftover eggs, just about any of our left overs really. She is also getting chicken feed. Yes, you read that right, chicken feed. We have our chicken feed made to order, along with a much bigger farm. The corn used is raised locally, without pesticides, and it is not genetically modified (which most corn is). There are a few other things added into it, like kelp that will only make an animal healthier! So we figured, Piggly Wiggly would do just fine on the chicken feed, and hey, if by chance she should lay an egg, we won't complain.

We will probably end up buying a bit less than $100 worth of feed for her, and she cost $50. So, we are getting our home grown, hormone free, non confinement raised, happy, healthy, clean pork for about a dollar a pound. Sounds like a good deal to me.

Now, onto the chickens. Chickens were the first animal we brought to the homestead. We now have about twenty laying hens. These lovely ladies generously supply us with between 12 and 16 eggs a day. These are very high quality eggs! Their yolks are very dark, orange really, and they are packed to the brim with nutrients. If I were to buy these eggs in the health food store, they would be between $3.00-6.00 a dozen.

We buy about $30 worth of chicken feed a month for these girls, much less in the spring and summer when there is more forage. So, our eggs are less than $1.00 a dozen. This is a huge bargain considering what a nutritional powerhouse the egg is.

Now, onto those goats. We have them for milk, and is the milk ever delicious. We will have three goats in milk in May, and will hopefully be getting about 2 gallons a day. We buy probably about $15 worth of feed for them to eat on the milk stand, and hay for them in the winter.

If we were buying this delicious raw goat's milk from a goat share program it would cost us $6-8 a gallon. This is a huge, huge savings. We get our goat's milk for 25 cents a gallon!

Another bonus from keeping goats is that they have kids every year. Some of those kids will be males, and we will raise the males for a few months and then add some more meat to the freezer. Goat meat, called chevon, is very similar to venison. We will be putting mostly chevon roasts in the freezer.

So, there you have it. Animal products will never be cheaper than if you raise them yourself! And the benefits are so much more than just food. Children will learn where food really comes from, and will develop a great work ethic from caring for all of these creatures.

So, if you have a bit of land, or you are fortunate enough to live in a town where zoning laws don't prohibit small livestock, look into raising a few animals!

For more frugal tips, visit Biblical Womanhood for Frugal Friday