Farming For Self-Sufficiency
(Page 7 of 7)
November/December 1974
Copyright © 1973 by John and Sally Seymour. Introduction copyright © 1973 by Schocken Books. Inc.
You can kill your first lamb at three months old. Lambs are generally considered fit for sale at about 70 to 75 lbs. live weight. Personally I like mutton, and I think that a three-year-old wether (castrated ram), well fatted and well hung, is the best meat in the world. If you are going to kill your lambs before their first Christmas, or even soon after, you need not castrate them. If you are going to keep them on much longer then you should castrate, and you can do this very simply with a knife, a Burdizzo or the new rubber rings. The latter require no skill and don't seem to cause the lamb much annoyance. You can then keep your wethers on for two or three years, if you can spare the grass. You can fatten them, for from two to four months, on such things as swedes, hay, crushed oats or maize or whatever corn you can get; and a small proportion of barley meal, perhaps, but not too much: it is heating for the sheep. Beans too are good but not more than a quarter of a pound per sheep per day.
RELATED CONTENT
GOATS
Goats are creatures that I would never keep if I could possibly keep cows. Their milk is as good as cows' milk, as goat keepers will never tire of telling you, and is in fact better for invalids. (But if you are a self-supporter you will not be an invalid.) They can give up to two gallons a day, but the idea that they will do this on sticks and stones is an illusion. They want pretty high feeding, on expensive concentrates, to give very much milk at all. They will not eat much grass but do very well on wild brushwood and herbage. If you have some areas of rough hillside, or heath, goats might be your answer. They tether very well, on roadsides and the like. But they do not like rain, or too much cold. They are not hardy animals. They should be housed at night. Killed, they are edible but stringy. Hardly any fence will contain them and they will ruin your young fruit trees sooner or later, no matter what you do to stop them. I like goats one way only—and that is in curry.
RABBIT
Rabbits are an obvious source of meat for the selfsupporter, and their skins are fine to cure and make hats or waistcoats out of. It is said that three does and a buck will give you a rabbit to eat every three days of the year; but I think if I tried to eat a rabbit every three days of the year I should get fed up with them. We have made several attempts to keep them, but the general trouble, smell and mess has generally made us give up in the end. If you had good hutches, out of the rain, easily kept clean, and the time and patience to collect endless green stuff, they might be a source of cheap meat. They need some concentrate too, though, oats or bran or the like. And keep the buck away from the does when they are kidding.
PIGEONS
A pigeon loft is an obvious source of meat, and they say that the pigeons will feed off your neighbours' crops and not yours, but I have never kept them. There is a magnificent medieval pigeon tower at Dunster in Somerset, the round wall of which is perforated with hundreds of pigeon holes, and with a revolving ladder inside, which enables the pigeon keeper to climb up and help himself to any pigeon he chooses. The adults should never be eaten, for pigeons pair for life, but each pair lays a pair of eggs every six weeks right through the year, fattens the resulting squabs up to one pound in weight each and then lays two more eggs. So if the squabs are harvested just before the new eggs are laid a constant supply of meat can be obtained. The adults live and lay for seven years. Corneaux and Mondain are the best food breeds.
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