9 Animals That Turn Half an Acre Into a Self-Sustaining Farm — Old Scottish Farmer’s Method

📗 Get My Complete Poultry Guides Here: https://angusdouglaspoultry.com/ If you've got half an acre of grass you mow every weekend, you're paying to keep ground that could be feeding you instead. Most folk add animals one at a time until the yard is trodden bare and the feed bill eats every penny those animals were meant to save. The animals were never the problem — it's what happens between them. In this video I count off nine animals that fit together on half an acre, from a trio of rabbits to compost worms, ducks, quail, bees, meat birds, two weaners, goats and the laying hens that hold the whole thing together. I go through what each one costs, how much room it needs, how much work it is, and what it hands on to the next. Around 40 to 50 kilos of rabbit meat a year, fifteen slow-grown birds for the best part of thirty kilos of chicken, two pigs for over a hundred kilos of pork, and two to four litres of goat milk a day at her best. I'll be straight with you too — half an acre won't feed a family everything. You'll still buy hay, layers ration and pig nuts, and I'll show you the two jam jars of soil that prove what the animals do to your ground. There's also the rule I work to: the hen house in the middle, twenty steps from every other pen, and the chalk arrows on my grandfather's byre door that took me thirty years to understand. If you've got a small bit of ground and you want eggs, meat, milk and honey off it without a shed full of feed sacks, start here. CHAPTERS: 00:00 – Half An Acre, Nine Animals 01:25 – Five Generations On This Croft 02:25 – The Feed Sack Trap 03:17 – Animal #1: Rabbits 04:32 – Rabbit Muck And Feed 05:50 – Animal #2: Worms 07:08 – Building The Worm Bed 07:56 – Animal #3: Ducks 09:01 – The Trouble With Ducks 10:08 – Animal #4: Quail 11:15 – Where Quail Fit In 11:54 – Animal #5: Bees 13:10 – Where I Place The Hive 14:21 – Animal #6: Meat Birds 15:30 – Thirty Kilos In The Freezer 16:27 – Animal #7: Pigs 17:52 – Pig Rules And Paperwork 18:50 – Animal #8: Goats 20:00 – Why Goats Not Sheep 21:12 – Animal #9: Laying Hens 22:17 – The Hen's Five Jobs 23:15 – The Year On This Croft 24:48 – The Order I'd Start In 25:18 – Reading The Two Jars 25:57 – What The Arrows Meant 26:46 – Your First Step This Weekend #Homesteading #SelfSufficiency #BackyardChickens #SmallholdingLife #HalfAnAcre #RaisingRabbits #KeepingDucks #BeeKeeping #PigKeeping #GoatMilk