The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Community => Coffee Lounge => Topic started by: RyanNobson on November 30, 2016, 10:36:54 pm
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Hey I'm new here!
I have roughly an acre and a quarter and was wondering how I can make a profit from it, As it currently costs around £400 a month for the feed for the pigs, sheep and chickens.
I've thought about selling eggs, but want to make a bit more money than a couple of quid for a dozen eggs.
The pigs will be ready to breed this coming year so I can sell the piglets from them. And the sheep should be ready next year to breed, so I will also be able to sell their lambs.
But I mainly want a way to make money up until then, Anyone got any tips for what I can do to make myself enough money, just to even cover the £400 for the cost of the feed every month?
TIA! :pig: :chook: :sheep:
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An interesting question - how to make a profit from an acre and a quarter? (How many times has that been asked on this forum?)
My first thought is that you will have spent a further £800 since you posted the question and presumably got nothing back, so by the time your animals are productive you will have spent a FORTUNE.
So - you'll never make money from the sheep on that acreage. So eat them or put them in at market. Getting them slaughtered privately and selling the meat is probably the most profitable option. But DO get your meat buyers sorted out before you end up with a pile of meat and nowhere to put it.
Pigs can be profitable on that acreage. But if you want money now, then again you need to sell them now. Again for breeding or meat.
Ok - that's reduced your feed bill by about £400/month. (presumably the hens don't cost much if you only have a dozen or so eggs to sell.) So that must feel like having a profit now that you're not shelling out all that money on feed.
But if you want to make a profit, then you need to plan it. Not just plunge in and then think "Where do I go from here?"
If you fancy pigs, then take it slowly. Maybe get a few weaners, grow them and sell them fat. Then buy some more and expand gradually.
As for poultry - I found the most profitable way was to have a few rare breeds and sell pure bred hatching eggs. Look up the price of hatching eggs - quite a nice little earner. Another alternative is to buy day old ready sexed chicks and sell them as point of lay.
But essentially I'm sure most people on here would answer your question by saying - "YOU CAN'T"
Smallholding is more a lifestyle choice and way of life.
Easiest way to make a profit (not a fortune!) is to rent it out to someone else and let them work themselves to death 20/7 instead of you.
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I agree. If you're somewhere where farmgate sales are practical then eggs, soft fruit like raspberries and strawberries and buying in weaners and selling the pork (once you've shelled out for pig arks, drinker system, fencing and feed and have bought or can hire or borrow a trailer for transportation) might make a small profit. That area is too small for sheep, unless you buy in hay almost all year round (another expense), and can split the land to make smaller enclosures to allow the ground to be rested (yet another expense).
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Landroverroy - you're such a cynic :roflanim: but I agree of course.
Yes, one and a quarter acres is way too small to make a worthwhile profit from smallholding activities. You can have self-supporting hens by selling their eggs - you'll get just enough to pay for their feed and have enough for you to eat too. The same for sheep and as you can only keep a small handful on such a small area, your crops will be small. You will surely want to keep some meat for yourselves - we find what we bring in for carcasses covers our costs and pays the slaughter charge for the few sheep we send off each year (we breed breeding stock so it's mostly males which are eaten), and we get the ones we put in our own freezer for free.
I don't know about pigs on a small scale, but I'm assuming it's the pig feed which is flooring you.
Selling veg at the gate will earn you pennies and take a lot of hard work to produce, as will jam, chutney etc. I have heard of people setting up small businesses based on home preserves, in which case you would need to plant all your land with orchards. Hens, pigs and sheep can graze and scuff about under trees once the trees are big enough, and if you choose the appropriate breeds of sheep and pig which won't destroy the trees. Pigs rooting about will help fertility, and eating fallen fruit will provide a tiny bite to livestock.
If you take a look at the farming statistics, large numbers of small family farms (depending on where you live, that would mean from about 100 acres to about 300 or more, even more in the LFAs) have been going out of business for many years, because they can't make a profit from that acreage, even with one or both adults working off farm.
I think what most of us end up doing is having full time jobs to bring in the wages, and enjoying our land and animals without expecting to make a profit.
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Out of interest how many pigs, sheep and chickens do you already have on you acre and quarter to cost 400 a month?
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We have 75 acre since 2009 haven't broke even 2009 and 2010 snow 11 and 12 late spring 13 14 no summer 15 16 floods and in dept paid out november and flooded Christmas day dept due to water damage and this season 3 sales dawn bird flue. So if I contract lamb and fabricate I make money whith the Croft I loose. IF the chickens go that's it. So I pack up iv got till 2022 to pay of the dept. Pigs cheaper to bye direct chicks better bye 1 each ewes made good money but it's my love bees failed. So the answer don't get involved poor health stress and in dept. I'm naw selling the hens to pay for the others animals feed
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You wont make money from your farming by the sounds of it. If your thinking of dumping the sale value of a house in surrey into land thinking it will sustain you, then your wrong to think you can make it.
like the 'peep show' skech
The only way to make a profit from your land is tack it to next door?
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The thing with farming/smallholding is that to look at it you would think it should be making money, after all there is produce you sell from off it. However the way the world has turned since the 50-60's, and travel has become more popular, there is now so much food that it has become far cheaper than it should be and because of that it is no longer valued. The short answer to this is you can't make very much out of it, we (currently) are only making enough to get by and pay the bills, hopefully this will change in the near future and we will be making a little more than we are. If you are in it for the money, which I don't think you are due to the post you put to us, then it isn't the best way to go. If however you do it, like the rest of us, because you enjoy what you do then you will be producing enough to cover bills/costs and whatever you sell will help towards that. The attitude to take before going into keeping livestock/growing fruit/veg isn't about making loads of money, but because you enjoy doing it and the rewards which come out of that are truly brilliant. Hope this post doesn't sound too harsh :( All the best with it all and I look forward to hearing more posts from you.
All the best :thumbsup:
WBF
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Id be very interested to hear off anyone who is 'making money' - whats the catch? ;)
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Please don't feel got at Ryan. ..... But I guess we all have numerous questions about your set up and future business plan .... Have you worked out your potential income when you have pigs and lambs?..... We are about to have our 4th lambing with 20+ ewes a d they barely pay for themselves.
Did you mean £400 month all year ? That sounds a huge amount on just an acre of land.
Have you worked out how much land is needed when you have offspring too? We have had to tack out our ewe lambs. How will you prevent worm problems?
There have been numerous threads on here asking how to make money smallholding .... The general consensus is the minute you get animals you don't .... You enjoy your life, eat well ,love your animals and get another job to pay the bills!
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Hello [member=166388]RyanNobson[/member] , I realise there was quite a delay in you getting a first response so maybe you have not seen these responses?
As to whether it is possible to make a profit from a smallholding your size I don't know, I guess it depends on what you mean by smallholding which is another debate altogether. I've taken the track of trying to make each enterprise, sheep, goats, pigs, chickens cost efficient and where possible break even on money in money out but of course that doesn't account for my time. To get anywhere with livestock it is critical to make sure the feed costs are covered by the benefit you are getting either by selling or add to your own larder. That can be very scale dependent, for example I can raise four weaners and keep one butchered pig which covers the outgoing as I have friends who will pay a premium for my home raised pork, but if I did 8 I would have to drop the price and would probably end out of pocket. Tim and Dot Tyne cover this well in their new book.
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There is a certain plant that would make you a lot of cash :innocent: :roflanim:
But I agree with what other people said, Rare breeds of poultry could do you alright Maybe quail and birds people like to hunt.
If you can find a market for it Rabbits take a fraction of the space and you could sell meat, pelt and angora hair.
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Depends if you mean "surplus" or "living" I can't think of any legal means for you to make a living even if you have very few demands for cash.
You may be able to make a surplus of income over costs, though, while providing yourself and family with good quality food.
The proble is with small numbers and a small surplus per unit produced, it never amounts to much in total :)
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The proble is with small numbers and a small surplus per unit produced, it never amounts to much in total :)
I don't know, Rosemary. What with the Great European Courgette Famine (https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/jan/17/uk-supermarket-courgette-shortage-italy-spain-cold), I reckon our chest freezers must be worth a couple of grand by now :)
Add in the impact of the 5p plastic bag levy on the value of our under-sink cupboard, and it's a wonder we're not retired already! :roflanim:
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As has often been said, the best way to make a small fortune from farming is to start off with a large fortune.
It's very easy to think that scaling up from a couple of pigs, a few chickens or whatever will also result in profit. You have to remember that you're scaling up your costs and workload at the same time. I used to be very optimistic about profitability and a generally positive outcome to my endeavours however despite six or seven years of hard graft, and what many would see as successful sales in terms of turnover, at the end of the day I'm knackered, demoralised and the pigs have eaten any profit we used to think we might make.
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what would I do with an acre and a quarter?
well, I'd first want to understand a few things - what level of "profit" are we talking about? Enough to pay a mortgage. or will you have "proper" jobs for that? Does the land essentially just need to pay for itself - the feed, fencing, animal outlay, hay making, etc etc?
assuming that we're talking about the latter, rather than the ability to get £20k a year from it.... then another question:
How much capital are you willing to throw at the problem initially?
Of course, whatever capital you have you might be better off putting into some sort of high-interest (are there any anymore?) scheme, but then you wouldn't have the lifestyle that we all love so much.
If I had a spare 20k to throw at an acre and a quarter, then possibly vineyard territory? It takes a long time to get your money back, but I gather they do make a profit (white wine only of course... english red is rubbish). Less investment and lower profits might lead me down the applejuice/cide route - plant half of the plot with an orchard. Serious local market research needed here.
Otherwise - We always found pigs turned a good profit. We used to make the whole pig into sausages and sell the sausages for £6 a kilo (plain) or £8 a kilo (flavoured). Our market stood those prices well back in 2008 ish. We haven't yet got pigs at our new place, so not sure on the market precedence around here. Obviously reducing feed cost is key. I seem to remember that you could become a registered waste handling business and take things like biscuit factory or salad factory waste then... that might cut costs, but you need transport and storage. No doubt someone will have worked out a rotational scheme where you might be able to keep 1/3 acre of pig, 1/3 acre of roots, 1/3 acre of legumes, and rotate them. The veg crops feed the pigs, pigs manure & work the land. don't quote me on that... it's plucked from thin air, but I bet someone has done the maths on that sort of thing. That would make your feed costs very ver (especially once you start storing your own seed).
Excuse that slight brain-fart.
Adam
There are other
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I think we might all be talking to ourselves as [member=166388]RyanNobson[/member] seems to have disappeared. It would be interesting to hear what he thinks of all the info TAS posters have so kindly shared.........
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The vet told us to take up gambling. He said that we could get rid of our money with much less effort :roflanim:
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I'm really interested in having a small farm one day of perhaps 50 acres. I've been doing a lot of reading and it seems that very few people seem to be making money and I wonder if it is because it's impossible or because most people lack one key element which makes things doomed to failure. Some people say they can't get the sales but surely if you bought in the right area and could market well you should be ok. Using the all in 1 pig cost calculator and retail rates for premium pork there seems to be some margin there. Is it the case that this all hold but to be a viable venture it would need to be of a scale that one person couldn't manage? I've seen a few people say they have been able to make money and also read some case studies in academic work, so are these just people who have been able to get all the elements working and scaled to a small but sustainable size?