Can you work full time and keep sheep / cattle or pigs off site?

Ding Dong

As the link suggests, my brother works full time and has an acre on which he has geese, ducks and hens etc. He would like to look into getting a few sheep or pigs or dexters, but first needs to know, if working full time is it possible to rent a few acres nearby and keep these animals? Obviously time would be a factor and winter would be a bit diff I thought. Anyone doing soemthing similar? how they finding it? any opinions?

errisshooter

Theres No reason why you couldnt keep a few sheep and work your normal week.,Pigs very messy animals!!:p.Dexters are a nice idea but if your planning on out-wintering them they could muck up groung pretty fast.:(,id be in favour of sheep any day..;)its all about how set up you are and what sort of ground you have got for them.,:D

How many were you thinking of getting?
How much ground have you got?
What type of soil is it?

Ding Dong

errisshooter wrote: »

Theres No reason why you couldnt keep a few sheep and work your normal week.,Pigs very messy animals!!:p.Dexters are a nice idea but if your planning on out-wintering them they could muck up groung pretty fast.:(,id be in favour of sheep any day..;)its all about how set up you are and what sort of ground you have got for them.,:D

How many were you thinking of getting?
How much ground have you got?
What type of soil is it?

well he hasnt got anything at the mo. he was considering renting a few acres. hes in the wicklow hills area

errisshooter

Well if its hilly ground id go for a mayo mule or lanark type ewe as this ground would suit them.,and there fairly low maintenance!!;)

Ayla

My husband & I have 1.7 rough acres on a northfacing, poorly draining hill. We both work & we have two young kids under the age of 5. We currently have geese, but before we had our second child we had 5 pigs, 2 goats and chickens.

The pigs were really easy to keep (they are very tidy animals, don't let anyone say otherwise!), but they are insanely smart. They will pull up and/or push over fences in their burrowing. We used old pallet boards which we put up on their side & nailed together to make a small paddock, then we used electric fencing to make runs. These runs we moved every couple of weeks (always off the main paddock area). The pigs didn't challenge the fencing after they got buzzed a couple of times so it was easy enough to keep them contained. Problem was the uprooted grasses kept grounding the fencing, and they figured this out too so we had to stay one step ahead of them.

All in all, we got our pigs in March-April & had them butchered in Oct-Nov, and they only used a max of 1/3 of our entire site throughout their time with us. OP - if your brother is planning on keeping the pigs for the longterm he will require a shed, but if he's willing to convert his 1acre to a farm he can keep a couple pigs on his land (assuming no planning permission difficulties). Otherwise, if he wants to rent land nearby he can keep the pigs there - they require a morning & evening look & feed, but otherwise are very self sufficient. They require a lot of water, good shade & shelter & are quite happy with dirt to dig in. Be sure that whatever land is used is well contained (very strong fencing!) and the owner is happy to have the land overturned by burrowing pigs!

We are currently working on improving our land and once this is done we will have pigs every year - they surprised us with a lot of joy!

tommy2bad

they surprised us with a lot of joy!

And bacon:D