When planning your survival setup, look into homestead animals for beginners.
Chickens, goats, and other low-maintenance livestock will provide you with plentiful, nutritious food in a crisis that wreaks havoc on supply chains.
Check out a list of animals even a newbie homesteader can easily raise.
9 Best Farm Animals to Begin Your Homesteading Journey
If you’re new to livestock, large or high-maintenance animals can seem overwhelming.
Rather than jump off the deep end and buy dairy cows, wool sheep, or alpacas, I suggest starting small.
The following homestead animals are simple to keep, budget-friendly, and don’t need too much space.
1. Chickens
There’s a good reason why chickens are a livestock staple pretty much all over the world. They’re useful, hardy, and easy to handle. Plus, farm-fresh eggs are far superior to their pale and bland supermarket counterparts.
Fully grown chickens need very little upkeep beyond food, water, and a secure coop that protects them from predators.
If you’re a newbie, you can start by purchasing a few adult hens or point-of-lay pullets who will soon reward you with delicious eggs. Once you’re comfortable with your new flock, you can graduate to raising chicks.
I strongly recommend including a rooster in your flock (one per 10-12 girls). Roosters are natural coordinators and protectors.
They’ll ensure everyone gets along, watch out for predators, and often bravely fight them to protect the hens. Also, despite their bad rap, good roosters aren’t aggressive; a belligerent bird can go in the crockpot.
Robust, dual-purpose chickens like Rhode Island Reds or Plymouth Rocks are usually the best choice for the beginner homesteader.
Orpingtons and Brahmas are great for extremely cold climates, while Mediterranean breeds like Leghorns and Fayoumis can tolerate heat well.
Steer clear of ornamental breeds and bantams if self-reliance is your main focus.
2. Goats
Do you want a source of fresh milk and cheese, but aren’t quite ready for raising cows?
Dairy goats could be the perfect solution. Saanens, Alpines, and Nubian goats are all great producers of healthy, nutritious milk.
Nigerian Dwarfs are another excellent option; they’re a smaller breed and produce rich milk with high fat content.
Goats are the perfect dairy animal if you live on uneven, ragged terrain with little grass. Both cows and sheep prefer flat grassy pasture, but goats thrive even in sparse conditions.
They’ll also help you clear brush; just be careful of over-pasturing, since goats are extremely aggressive, indiscriminating browsers. Keep them away from fragile young trees and your clothesline.
You should always have at least two goats, as otherwise they’ll get lonely. Provide them with a well-ventilated shelter, plenty of dry bedding, hay, and fresh water.
The conventional advice is to trim goats’ hooves every 6-8 weeks, but you might get away with trimming less often if your goats roam a rocky area.
If you’re new to goats, I suggest starting with 2-3 does. Bucks can be rambunctious and hard to handle, especially during rut.
Stud service or borrowing a buck once a year is a more practical solution for beginners.
4. Japanese Quail
Japanese quail (Coturnix) are often-overlooked, super-efficient little producers that can lay up to 300 eggs a year. They’re great if you currently live in a zone that doesn’t allow backyard chickens, or as a first-step fowl-raising project.
These birds are hardy, fairly quiet, and economical, boasting an excellent feed-to-egg ratio. Yes, their speckled eggs are small (three quail eggs equal about one average chicken egg) but delicious and attractive.
Quail mature quickly, and hens will usually start producing eggs at about 8 weeks (!). Extra males can serve as a source of meat.
Thanks to their small size, quail will do fine in a large cage or a portable rabbit hutch that you can move indoors if it gets too cold.
They need game bird feed or, in a pinch, turkey feed. You can also supplement their diet with various seeds, leafy greens, insects, worms, and boiled eggs.
A word of warning: you can’t free-range quail like other fowl. If your quail escape, you’ll likely never see them again.
5. Fish
Backyard fish farming is surprisingly simple and rewarding.
Using an inexpensive setup like a small aboveground pool or a food-grade barrel, you can provide your household with a healthy, sustainable protein source year-round.
If you have a pond on your property, you can also raise fish in a basic floating cage.
You could take this one step further and start aquaponics, i.e., growing fish and plants in the same environment. This works synergistically, with plants filtering the water and fish waste providing nutrients for the plants.
The best fish for beginners are hardy, fast-growing species like tilapia and carp. Perch and trout are also good choices if you live in a colder climate.
Your tank may need oxygenation when you raise many fish in a relatively small space. Consider investing in a solar-powered air pump if you’re off-grid.
You can supplement commercial fish pellets with water lettuce, duckweed, earthworms, and even some kitchen scraps.
5. Bees
Beekeeping may look intimidating, but as long as you take the proper precautions, it’s actually one of the lowest-maintenance homestead endeavors to explore.
Once you establish a hive, bees are largely self-sufficient and only require a checkup every week or two, besides seasonal maintenance and honey harvesting.
You can contact a local beekeeper to purchase a bee starter package. Or, if you’re up for a challenge, you could capture a wild swarm and relocate it to an empty hive.
The most common hive type is the Langstroth, which consists of stacked boxes. Place the hive in an area sheltered from strong winds.
Rosemary, sage, lavender, basil, and other hardy, useful herbs all produce flowers that bees love. Don’t forget to provide water during dry weather, or your bees might get into your neighbor’s dog’s water bowl.
A bird bath or a shallow dish filled with marbles works well for this purpose.
6. Hair Sheep
If you’re looking into a larger meat animal but are wary of raising beef cows, consider hair sheep.
Unlike wool sheep such as Merinos or Romneys, hair sheep don’t need shearing: they grow a thick winter coat, then shed it in the spring.
Popular hair sheep breeds include Katahdins, Dorpers, and St. Croix. They produce mild-flavored, lean meat.
Hair sheep are efficient grazers with versatile foraging patterns. They’re usually more resistant to parasites than wool breeds, rarely get hoof rot, and have slower-growing hooves that don’t need much trimming.
All in all, these hardy animals require minimal upkeep.
Most hair sheep are very fertile, lamb easily, and seldom need help with lambing. The ewes make good mothers who can usually take care of twins or triplets, so you can expect few bottle-fed lambs.
7. Ducks
Would you like a source of large, flavorful eggs with plenty of healthful omega-3 fatty acids?
Consider adding ducks to your homestead. Khaki Campbell ducks are prolific layers that may produce up to 300 eggs a year. Other productive breeds include the Welsh Harlequin, Swedish, and Indian Runner.
Duck eggs are about 1.5-2 times larger than the average chicken egg and boast much bigger yolks, which makes them richer and creamier. They also keep longer thanks to their thicker shells.
Ducks would greatly enjoy a pond, but if you don’t have one, a kiddie pool or even a large tank will do. They need to be able to dunk their heads in water to clear their nostrils. Ducks also prefer mating in water.
You can usually keep ducks and chickens together as long as you watch flock dynamics and make sure the drakes (male ducks) aren’t aggressive.
Ducks do fine on chicken layer feed, but need a niacin supplement. Foraging and kitchen scraps will diversify their diet. Keep in mind that ducks don’t roost and poop a lot, so make sure to provide plenty of dry bedding.
8. Turkeys
Commercial turkey breeds like the Broad-breasted White are bred for fast meat production and mature quickly.
They aren’t good at foraging and usually need artificial insemination to reproduce. In contrast, heritage turkeys like Bourbon Reds and Narragansetts are hardy and self-sufficient.
While heritage turkeys won’t produce as much meat as commercial breeds, their meat is more flavorful. They’re disease-resistant and need little care beyond the basics: a safe, dry coop, high-quality feed, and fresh water.
You can reduce reliance on commercial feeds if you have plenty of acreage where your birds can forage for greens and insects.
Heritage turkey hens are capable mothers who will sit on their eggs and rear the poults (young turkeys) independently.
You can house turkeys with chickens if you have enough space. Turkeys love roosting high at night, so provide a tall perch for them.
9. Guinea Fowl
Guinea fowl are active, energetic birds that will keep your property free of ticks, beetles, slugs, and even small snakes.
They also act like a natural intruder alarm: they’ll make a huge racket if they spot a fox or a stray dog anywhere near your property.
Keep in mind that guinea fowl are loud, so consider your distance from neighbors before you buy a bunch of keets.
Guineas will eat practically anything, from seeds and grasses to berries and various small critters. They’re flighty and not very tame, so while they’ll return home at sunset after roaming all day, they’ll often roost in trees or on a barn roof rather than in the coop.
Free-ranging guinea fowl will get most of their food on their own, so they cost very little to keep, but you may need to supplement their diet with game bird feed if you don’t have enough available pasture.
Guinea fowl meat is leaner and gamier-tasting than chicken, reminiscent of pheasant. The eggs are smaller than chicken eggs, but exceptionally tasty. Guinea hens produce about 100 eggs per year.
