The Top 10 Best Animals for Your Homestead | RangerRob Country Living

foreign our videos are made possible by ranger rob poopy bags available at amazon right now hello everyone this is ranger rob from the ranger rob country living want to welcome you to the show and today i thought i’d go through a list that i found uh of the top 10 best animals for homesteading and it was actually published by uh survival sullivan and uh i don’t necessarily agree with all of it but um it’s definitely a good foundation for starting a homestead now homestead basically is a place to try to be more self-sufficient so uh and uh a lot of it has to do with you know having gardening is a big part of that but deciding what kind of animals you might want you may not want any but uh what we thought we’d do is just go through the top 10 animals for homesteading you can kind of decide what would work best for you also keep in consideration that homesteading is also another way of prepping in another way prepping is considering that possibly we could have a big event where uh you know uh you might want some of these animals for that big event so without further ado let’s go through the list number one on the list is poultry and of course that would be things like chickens and chickens and ducks and geese and game birds if you really wanted them i used to do game birds uh there’s all kinds of different types of poultry some breeds lay eggs daily like chickens some breeds lay eggs up to about three years and a lot of folks will retire their chickens by then and turn them into uh well give them a new home in their freezer let’s just put it that way so uh chickens uh great for eggs they’re great for eating they’re also good for using on the property actually if you do some free ranging or what they call chicken tractors you can move them through your property and actually help maintain your your your fields better uh they have a lot of great purposes and they eat just about everything so let’s move on all right moving on to number two number two would be pigs that’s right what they say is pigs are an excellent source of meat they’re they’re not too difficult to raise and they will eat just about anything it’s so true one of the things you want to kind of keep in mind is uh the saying i can continuously hear about pigs is it’s they’re going to get loose they just manage to get loose they break fences and stuff but the big thing is they like to dig now i’ve watched many different homestead channels and uh some like to dig more than others some can really damage the land and some can just kind of do the top of it so anyway keep in consideration there’s different types of pigs out there do your research and find out what would work best for you do you want well really if you’re going to have pigs you can have them either for breeding or for meat and that’s really the best decisions that i’ve heard of of what you could do with pigs so number two pigs let’s move on to the next one all right number three is goats that’s right goats and when it comes to milk most people will choose cow’s milk however if you want to be practical goats may be a better choice why well compared to cows they’re actually more affordable and require a lot less space and that’s a very true subject goats can provide you two years supply of milk and give birth to two or three kids at a time so uh they do reproduce pretty well the other thing is when the milk when you can’t get milk anymore a lot of people will turn their goats into well let’s say give them a new home into the freezer also so uh the most important thing it’s mentioning here is to make sure that you pick out the right breed first of all with any of these animals make sure you determine what the purpose is for the animals do you want the animals for milk do you want them for helping graze your land do you want them for meat so if you decide to get goats do your homework figure out what breed you want and what’s best for your homestead moving on to number four uh sheep yes sheep so just like goats uh they don’t they won’t take up a lot of space and they can be left to eat grass we and they love to eat weeds which is one of the reasons why i actually had some sheep however the kind of um when i got sheep i got jacob’s sheep and i i actually tried to get them to see if they’d eat the cheat grass in our area and uh no they didn’t made everything but however if we keep them in a smaller area because of their hoofs they’ll actually trample it down pretty good um one of the things is they’re easy to take care of um and they give birth up to twice twice a year up to three lambs which i didn’t know that for each birthing event uh this would enable you to uh increase your flock over time quite quickly so uh they also say when you’re raising a sheep you will need a bit build a big fence around the perimeter to keep the sheep in and the predators out now number five uh when you look at animals not all animals are for eating but number five he suggests is dogs of course dogs when you have a homestead i’m telling you i have two dogs i have a german shepherd and a chocolate lab they are differently your early warning system they hear things that you just don’t just don’t hear they can protect your animals and of course protect your home so uh it’s important they say one of the things most suitable dogs for um are the large breeds such as rock um rockwellers german shepherds great veins and terriers which aren’t the biggest dogs but they’re yappy little guys and uh anyway with our animals here um what i do like is they they actually sometimes are nurturing to some of the animals that you keep on the farm i had a gym um a golden retriever that when we had a game bird farming i had checkers i actually had chuckles get loose and um actually the golden retriever would find them which you would think they’d kill them but she’d catch them and carry them and bring them back to the cages and hurt it was amazing so uh anyway um yeah a very important thing do you want an animal but you also gotta remember they’re carnivores and you need to you know they’re it’s another mouth to feed on the homestead so you have to weigh it out do you need a dog do you need someone to keep the predators away what kind of dog would you want and i tend to go with a larger breed our german shepherd has really good hearing and our chocolate lab is a very aggressive and uh letting us know that the strangers here so anyway um yeah dogs for our next best animal to have on your homestead believe it or not number six is and this one through me a little bit but actually it’s a great idea most of you guys might well hopefully you guys have water sources or basically a pond um catfish is the next choice and i’ve never raised catfish and i’ve never really thought about it but it’s a great idea now i’ve heard many people that have ponds on their homestead will put a lot of bass in them or different or perch or i my father had a place up in swim washington he actually had it planted with trout um but yeah catfish they say uh doesn’t they don’t need large spaces and they grow very fast it’d be a great source for food so i don’t have much more to add to that other in fact it’s a great idea if you have a pond and i guess the other thing would be what region you live in um i i kind of assume catfish can live in a lot of different environments so uh i look into that if you have a pond catfish might be your answer for a great food source all right moving on to number seven number seven what do you think it is you bet rabbits rabbits are actually a great choice however they’re super cute that’s the problem i have so rabbits are good for one of the main thing is their droppings are a miracle they are wonderful for gardens and the thing is is you can use them immediately unlike chickens when you use their uh droppings uh it has a lot of nitrogen in it and can actually it needs to be toned down so you need to let it sit for time but rabbits just like i believe goats and sheep are the same way you can put their manure into your gardens immediately and it doesn’t hurt them and won’t hurt your plants it’d be uh anyway but you can have pets you know rabbits for pets and uh just be aware that they they breed fast and just use their manure for your gardening and if i got rabbits that’s probably what i would do but they also are raised for meat too and it’s a great source because they multiply so fast you would have a regular meat source for your homestead in case you had troubles and you can combine the whole thing where you can collect their droppings uh amend your soil and you know you can keep a couple of breeders that would be kind of your pets and then also not get too close to the ones that you want to have for me so uh rabbits are a great source and they’re quiet that’s big depending where you live and where you’re homesteading um um you got to keep in consideration noise too there may be neighbors depending how you might have a small homestead where houses are fairly close you would want animals or fairly quiet so like if you’re doing chickens i would definitely try to get just hands unless you’re trying to actually breed them then you want a rooster but you know what a rooster does and so anyway keep in mind if you want to be quiet and also if you know trouble with a problem and we lost our you know our grid or something you uh having animals that are kind of quiet would kind of help lets you kind of stay in the shadows and that might be something to consider so rabbits was number seven next is number eight now this one is one that intrigues me and i i’d like to get into it but i want to get trained right and it takes quite a while to do it and that’s raising bees and uh if first of all if you think you can get over the fact of working with bees and uh some of us you know we see one b and we start doing the um the girly dance and uh and screaming like little girls i’m talking about men anyway um bees uh interesting critters one is be grateful if you have a guard garden having bees nearby would definitely help with pollination the other thing about honey is it is very healthy has a lot of medicinal purposes to it benefits you might say and it’s great for energy but it also stores well and it’s use you can use it as a sweetener for a lot of things that you’re eating so anyway they’re very easy to raise they’re not as dangerous as you think and a lot of folks um the big thing with bees though you also want to check your community to find out it’s okay to have them in certain areas so anyway bees raising bees getting honey uh i think it’d be fun i think it’d be interesting and uh two uh honey is an amazing product and it stores forever moving on to number nine that would be horses no we’re not talking about horses for eating but they’re saying and it’s actually when you think about it in a post sh tf kind of situation uh and cars aren’t available you’ve suddenly got some transportation that a lot of people don’t have so uh horses are uh are good for you know obviously traveling but they are also very expensive to keep and obviously you know in the united states people don’t raise horses for eating or anything like that but like a dog it’s going to be a responsibility to feed them they like grass they need property and you need to also if you want to write them you’re going to have to take care of them and actually write them and train them to that they’d be helpful to you to to me a horse is an entertainment thing or like a dog is if you’re gonna have a horse i always say i see people get horses and they just sit in their fields and they don’t exercise them they don’t write them they just have them as pets and i i think keeping a horse especially intelligent horses busy and learning things and writing them and giving them a purpose make their lives more complete and it’ll in return you have a very special pet uh or special animal uh horses and horse people are very close let’s put it that way and if there’s trouble and maybe there’s no transportation you’ve got a horse but also remember there’s quite the expense owning a horse so it’s something for you to think about would that be best for your homestead and that takes us to our final number ten and this is just like horses and then number ten would be cattle cattle are a lot of responsibility they’re a big animal they require a lot of food they hope you know it also depends on what kind of land you have do you have grass fields are you in a high desert like i am uh you need to understand the expense of owning one and uh keeping them healthy is a big thing and a lot of people also raise cattle for a couple of reasons one would be milk of course the second part would be for meat if i was a raised cattle and i kind of like to but it’s not going to happen i would definitely raise them for meat milking uh you know there’s a lot of neat things you can do with the milk and it and there’s a lot of procedures that go through and calving at the same time to remember that if you’re going to actually use the dairy side of milk and however there’s some great things you can do with the milk and if you like whole milk man it’s a way to go and you can make your own creams you can make your own cheeses make your own butter it’s amazing so you need to weigh just how i would say how far you are away from civilization whether you’d want your own cow or not when it comes to dairy to me i like the fact of finding a farmer that does do just cattle and then go in partnership and actually buy my cattle from a farmer and then have it processed to me in my particular homestead situation is the best choice for our homestead i um just i wouldn’t want to raise cattle here and in the particular area i actually cannot have cattle um i can have all pretty much all the other animals on this list i can’t have pigs either in this region but i don’t want neither one like i said i’d rather go out and find a co-op to work with and get my animals taken care of in a really good facility really good fields and i like mine grass-fed but i also like them grain fed at the end too so um and that’s something you need to know if that’s something you want and of course there’s the organic versus grain fed type thing so you need to keep that in mind but yep cattle was number 10. so that concludes our list of the top 10 animals for homesteading you got to keep in mind first of all how much space do you have uh space is going to be important and what kind of animals you choose to raise second how much responsibility do you want keep in mind certain animals are easy other animals are a little bit harder obviously when you get into horses and cattle you’re talking about a lot of work um a lot of people say the pigs are easy to but i kind of think that’s kind of up there too that’s kind of in the mid-range as far as animals to keep so keep in mind what’s best for your area if you live in an urban area uh or if you’re way out in the country those will also be an impact on what kind of animals you’d want but remember i know times are different and a lot of people are you know not used to living out in the country and stuff but everything we’re talking about as far as raising animals and raising animals for meat and things like that is a natural way of doing things and um i guess the first thing before you decide to do meat animals for any reason whatsoever is go to places and there’s farms and places out there that’ll allow you to come in and be a intern in a sense and see if it’s something you can handle not everybody can handle that i’ve met a lot of people who get lots of animals and turn out they can’t kill them and unfortunately that’s the reality of producing your own meat so keep in mind is that something you can do and is it practical for your homestead i hope you enjoyed this list we’re going to move on and call it a day here and if you have any comments or you have any other animals that we may not had on this list in the comments below please add them in there and give us your opinion on each type of animal that you may have had and your experiences was it easy was it hard did you need a lot of space did you do it in a little room little space i’d love to find out so guys thank you very much for watching don’t forget to like subscribe and share our videos all over the whole wide world and thanks for watching guys bye thank you very much for watching our video please take the time to like subscribe and share our videos all over the whole wide world thanks .