| Archive for Downsizer For an ethical approach to consumption |
| bodger |
Smallholder ?Does your smallholding pay its way ? If it doesn't at the moment and you wanted it to, what do you think you'd have to change, get rid of or bring in to make it do so ? |
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| Nick |
Yes, but only because I use mine simply to provide meat for myself. The value of that out weighs the financial cost of fencing and plant, etc.
If it was purely economics, no, not at all. I'd need to stock more stock, and sell it as a priority, rather than selling occasional excesses. |
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| mochyn |
Likewise. We get a bit of profit from pork, fruit etc. but nowhere near enough to pay the mortgage! |
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| bodger |
I wasn't thinking of a smallholding ever making a living, I don't think its possible, but at the moment, our actually costs us to run it. | ||||
| RichardW |
Wont that be the horses & fancy chickens? As you are all set up for chickens I would start selling POL's (we did loads & only stopped after the AI flu thing crippled us with over 200 birds ready to sell that we could not so they eat all the profit that we should have made. There is no competition round here for POL's. Breed your own & raise day olds too. You should be able to make £3-4 per head on day old raising. | ||||
| bodger |
The horses have their own bank account and are kept seperate from the smallholding account. It comes under the heading of daughters out going expenses. 
The fancy chickens can actually fetch in excess of a hundred quid a trio. 
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| RichardW |
Yeh I had been told that. How many can you shift at £100 / trio? I guess you need to do the shows to keep the reputation up? With the size of your place you need a good return per m2 so its chickens & pigs for animals or high value plants / crops / fruits. Or your cider. Free range chicken meat sells ok round here but was never quite enough to make it worth while even when getting a good price. Now turkey's always made a good profit every year.
PS start doing courses too. |
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| Pel |
I dont have a holding,but my rabbits almost pay their way.
To improve I'd have to have more litters a year, instead of say giving them 2months rest only give them a months rest, or even less, but then i'd need to buy another broody run/house/hutch. As 2 months gives me chance only to use one hutch. Though, any eggs i sell, the money goes into a pot which is for the animals and all their outgoing costs comes out of that pot, and the pot hasnt got to the bottom yet, so in a way guess they must be paying for themselves. |
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| mochyn |
I get more income from the livestock (including what we eat) and fruit & veg gardens than we spend on them, so I suppose that's a profit! | ||||
| Rob R |
Depends upon whether or not you class us as a smallholding?
At the moment it is touch and go, as establishing the buildings and equipment we need to run more efficiently is our biggest cost, although if don't hear from me again then assume it hasn't, and we've starved 
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| Nick |
I'm confident we'll hear from either Ixy or you.
dpack has recipes for longpig, I'm certain. |
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| Treacodactyl |
What about people with bees? Does anyone make any/much money from them at all? | ||||
| Jamanda |
I don't think so. not unless you are long established. It would take a long time to make back sart up costs. |
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| Rob R |
Those two statements appear to be a contradiction
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| Nick |
Not at all. Either one of you would provide plenty of nutrition AND a drop in the living costs. No need to eat you both. | ||||
| Pilsbury |
he only said we would hear from one of you................................. Bah beaten by Nick by seconds, Humbug |
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| Rob R |
You're forgetting about Ron
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| Ixy |
Yeah somehow as far as nutrition goes i think I'd be the better candidate than Rob. If we had to eat him, or dpack come to think of it, we'd be starving again by lunchtime.  However, I suppose once I had stewed up those two, I could live off my buttfat for quite some time, like a seal.
Er as far as economics goes I think that you can only bring IN so much moneyin this game, so you have to keep your eye more on what's going OUT. For me that's meant stopping buying bagged food of any kind - that's a nonsense for a start, making BOCM fatter designing and making my own housing that means I don't have to buy bedding, or spend hours cleaning out. Making the animals harvest their own feed is obvious and negates the need for backbreaking or oil-hungry work on my part. Using livestock to fill niches is great too - guinea pigs to graze the orchard for example means no time/effort spent on cutting down the weeds, and they fertilise as they go. You don't get that with a strimmer, and they were cheaper than a strimmer and reproduce themselves for nowt aswell. That's REAL efficiency that is 
I've also tried to cut down on passengers. Many people think producing their own eggs will be cheaper - not if you feed and bed exactly like the industry does, except without the economies of scale. But they also make the mistake of having too many birds, resulting in an expensive and wasted glut. Really, 3/4 ixworths would keep me in eggs for 4 years+, without having to breed/buy any replacements. I have more than that, but realise they are costing me. I keep them more for the hobby/upping numbers/improving the breed thing than making money. |
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| bodger |
I seem to be forever in the investment stage.
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| katie |
I need more or fewer chickens. At the moment I keep enough for the present customers but if a few are away, I have a glut and we end up eating loads. I haven't enough though to look for any more customers. I might have a go at raising day olds, especially as the worlsd and his wife seem to be keeping chickens at the moment. | ||||
| Castle Farm |
I have about 15 breeds of rare and tradional poultry and sell hatching eggs on the net and growers up to POL and stock cockerels.
They more than pay for themselves but you need to get quality stock and improve it year on year.You need past customers to keep coming back each year, so honesty and quality is paramount. Anyone that doesn't return next season will not only go elsewhere but not recommend you, which is worse. As you can imagine keeping around 300 birds takes a lot of work but it's a passion so I do the graft willingly. The sheep started with 4 quality Lleyns and mated to a good tup each year has got me up to 26 pure bred animals and this year I retained a tup lamb and hopefully next year I can start selling some ewes.The male lambs (7) will bring in a nice tidy sum sold direct to Farmfresh. We have no morgage to worry about and we both work part time doing jobs we both enjoy. I retire next year and start full time doing plants and poultry from here, as we are both very interested in gardening and have 16 acres to mess about with. It's a life style not a living but worth every penny if your happy doing it. |
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| gardening-girl |
We make enough money from selling our eggs to buy chicken and pig food,thats it! | ||||
| Tavascarow |
In a good year they can make £50 to £150 pounds a colony but as we haven't had a good year for some time they haven't made anything for three years. Good news is they haven't cost me anything for sometime either. The quail pay quite well. The chickens are probably break even, make more from selling birds at local auctions than I do selling eggs at the gate. Now I've raised a few silkie x pullets I'm hoping next year I wont need the incubator & heat lamp for more than quail so that will save a fair bit of electricity. If I costed my labour I would definately be in the red but without that probably break even. |
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| Mutton |
Just had to ask - do you eat the guinea pigs? Or are you selling to the pet market? |
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| Ixy |
neither - they are purely biological weed control! |
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| bodger |
Up until now, I've produced books purely for the benefit of the taxmans eyes but from here on in, I'm going to try and get the place to pay its way.
I've got one or two ideas in the pipeline, my apple juice and cider venture most of you already know about. Did you see Adam Henson on Country File feeding the apple pulp to his pigs ? I'd already thought of that idea.
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| Ixy |
I would be careful where defra are concerned on that one - an apple straight from the tree/windfall is fine but once it's gone into a kitchen/been processed etc the rules get a bit tighter... | ||||
| bodger |
No mention on countryfile about that. I know that rules and regulations are bent if not broken but I know of several cider makers who feed their waste to both pigs and cattle.
On a bigger scale, Westons of Much Marcle send all their hundreds of tons of waste to an animal feed manufacturer. I hope that stupidity doesn't stop me from doing this, our dexters certainly used to enjoy their desert.
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| GSHP |
I did wonder about regs. in regards to feeding the pulp to pigs. We do, the cider is pressed in a shed and comes into contact with no other food product.
Before we had the pigs my uncle used to give the pulp to the local gamekeeper for his pheasants. |
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| Nick |
Commercially, there's no problem with it. If you were doing it in your own kitchen, you'd be breaking the rules, as I understand it.
I looked into this when trying to get spent yeast from a local brewery. I'll try and find the discussions. |
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| Rob R |
That's right Nick, the rules are a lot simpler if you only deal in one class of food, but you need to keep everything seperate from domestic premises, equipment, etc. | ||||
| Nick |
Here's the discussion. I never did get any, just haven't had enough pigs to make it worthwhile, but that's the only reason.
http://forum.downsizer.net/viewtopic.php?t=31503&postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight=yeast+pigs&start=0 |
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| RichardW |
As long as you have HACCP documentation to support your working practices (keeping meat sepperate) then its ok even in a domestic kitchen. Again its all about paper work. | ||||
| Ixy |
it's because places handling these things are 'approved' to do so. as long as it's approved you can feed them any old industrial process rubbish. you can imagine how I feel about that - I'm just saying, y'know, shush!!!
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