Livestock

[jamesneuen]

Put this under here since I couldn't think of anywhere better.

Do any of you know any animals that can free range even in snow? Seems like a ton of effort would go into planting, cutting hauling and storing feed for any animal if they can't free range. Some animals like deer, moose, and odd breeds of rabbit can do it but only if given an enormous area to range.

[bacpacker]

That is a question that depends on several variables. What is the stock that's free ranging? What area are they in, out west, down south, up north? How much snow?

Cattle and horses are heavy feeders and will require a lot more area than say goats. If you are out west, grass is much less available than around here. If we don't overload the land and rotate the stock thru several small lots every week or so, we can keep grass pretty much thru the winter. If snow is deep such as the upper Midwest, Canada, not much you can do besides feed the stock.

[Sniper-T]

Off hand, I cannot think of anything domestic that would free range in a typical winter up here. Ungulates such as deer/moose feed on tree branches/buds, and subsidize with grasses for roughage. Hence they can survive all but he harshest winters; but a particularly harsh winter and even they will suffer devastating winter kill.

A bigger problem with conventional livestock, is water. Ungulates can use snow, but both cattle and horses need actual water, and a lot of it.

eta: I moved your thread into the 'all things animal' sub-section

[jamesneuen]

Thanks ST. And I know people raise deer on farms but I thought it was only for repopulation of the local herd. Moose would be almost impossible to raise I think. Anybody know how rabbits fare? I know they survive but mortality rates?

[realist]

As others have said it all depends upon how deep the snow it. When you look at the cattle on the ranges out west here they do survive, sometimes, without supplemental feeding. However by the end of winter they are very skinny and weak. Look at the different types of animals in your area such to see if they do well. For the most part you will need to do supplemental feeding in order for you animals to survive. If you take goats for instance the nice things about them is they don't eat much so your storage requirements aren't so much. Start raising horses and cattle then you need barns full of hay. One other thing is cattle will eat pretty much whatever you give them, horses can get sick. At for goats I have always had fresh feed for them so I don't know how they would react to older feed.