Life With Livestock

Not many people these days have the opportunity to eat truly fresh meats. Fresh meat has both good and bad points. Most American beef is tender-aged. That means that it is hung in a cooler and allowed to rot a little bit before the meat is cuts and sold. The bacteria break up the long fibers in the meat and make it much more tender and less chewy. Fresh beef from a sucking calf is really good but fresh beef from an adult steer is tough and chewy as hell if it isn’t aged. We used to butcher a calf when they weighted not much more than 300 to 350 pounds alive and on the hoof. This seemed to be a good balance between size and tenderness. About the only time that we got the sucking calves was when a bull and cow got together at the wrong time of year and the cow dropped a calf at the start of winter.

Pigs are great and hogs are ok. We usually penned the hogs and poured the feed to them for a few months before butchering them. The little pigs we ate and they were good as they were up to about 150 pounds. Over that size were fed and fattened before butcher.

Chickens are of three sorts, chicks that are too small to eat, friers that are like in their “teenage” years and then hens and roosters. Most are eaten as friers especially ALL of the little roosters. Little roosters are a pain in the butt and will start fighting and killing each other if you wait too long to butcher them. Hens you bake and roosters…well they end up in chicken and dumplings if you kill one that s fully grown. You have to watch them close and they will sometimes start killing chicks and just demand to be made into chicken and dumplings as soon as possible.

We used to run them all free-range during the day and then would put up the chickens at night. The cattle and hogs ran in the pasture and we only penned the hogs in preparation to butcher. We fed them all regularly so that when we wanted one of them or when we were treating them medically or worming them, they would show up once a day to get a goody.

We handled them a lot so that they were gentle and friendly. You do NOT want to turn them into pets in general. A bull or big hog can play rough and hurt you without intending to. An uncle bottle raised a bull and it followed him around like a dog and was very sweet and affectionate. One day the bull, now way over a thousand pounds was rubbing on him and got him pressed up against the truck. He broke about 6 or 8 ribs. He had to sell the bull to a neighbor and get another but that he was careful NOT to be too friendly with.

We never kept goats, but I know a lot of people that do. They might be the best choice for a survival animal. Without a freezer cattle are just too big and where I live there are one and a half million feral pigs you can shoot if you want one. They have become quite a problem. Goats are meal-sized, they can provide milk and some breeds offer wool. They are rather good at taking care of themselves and other than wolves or MAYBE coyotes they will fight off most predators. Protecting chickens can be a full-time job. If you have a pond you might think about ducks and geese. Put a roost out over the water for them and most predators just don’t seem to bother them much.


Livestock is handy and is sort of like a larder that is always stocked. Unfortunately, in a total collapse, they also will attract a lot of attention. The sad thing is that the people that will be stealing your animals most likely will not have a clue about what to do with them once they have them. I actually saw a person try and boil a chicken hide, feathers, guts, and all one time. SERIOUSLY, they had recently moved to the country and someone told them that they needed to get some chickens. It was a disaster! They didn’t know how to catch or humanely kill the poor birds much less what to do to cook an entire bird nor how to cut one up. !!!

With most livestock if you can’t let them gain most of their nourishment free range you will run upon the question of would you have more food if you ate what you fed the animals. I know that hunting sounds good and easy but it isn’t. that is why people first started domesticating animals. Hunting after the fall is going to be a HAIRRASING experience. The woods are going to be FULL of idiots shooting at anything that moves including you. I think that it is going to take a year or two for things to settle out.

There are going to be millions of starving people and when winter comes they are going to freeze to death or asphyxiate themselves with fires in enclosed places. For many, the lack of police will mean that they can and will do ANYTHING that they want to. The thin veneer of civilized behavior is going to tear away like wet toilet paper!