I think this topic gets to the core of the “hard part” of a small farm. The opposite side of “health and wellness” is “sickness and death.” They are two sides of the same coin and they are both found on the small farm. And it can be hard! And expensive.

Expensive in dollars and cents and in heartache and misery. The good news is that as a small farmer you have a lot of control over this. Not total control–that’s up to the good Lord!–but you do have a lot of influence over outcomes. I find the #1 factor in our animals health and wellness has been our experience as shepherds–the better we’ve gotten at taking care of them, the more they have thrived. But gaining that experience was sometimes very expensive.

Here’s a simple 4-step process we’ve tried to use to control health expenses on our small farm:

1. Create a healthy environment
2. Match your animals to that environment
3. Create a healthy routine of care
4. Provide for expert help when needed  

Easy to say, harder to execute. {smile} Our definition of “healthy” for each of these has changed over time. As I mentioned in our series opening post it’s very important to know what you’re about on your farm, and not compare apples and oranges. If you want to be organic, only use herbal health products, be 100% grass-fed, or any other system-specific approach, you’ll need to define these standards for your own approach.

But we can share some basics.

1. Create a Healthy Environment

Here’s a common oversimplification–healthy animals cost less than sick animals. 

This is a dangerous ground for a new farmer or homesteader. Why? Because healthy animals don’t happen by luck or magic. They happen because the farmer invests in their health and well-being–and that’s usually not cheap!

Example? A farmer says he has hay for $60 a bale (the average price for a big round bale in our area is $50-60) Ouch. But you talk to him and he says, “Well, whatcha feeding? Sheep and cows? I got some cow hay out back for $30 a bale.” Hmmm…in our experience “cow hay” is hay that is either old and moldy, stored outside and moldy, or baled badly and moldy… See the common denominator here? The thought is that cows are less sensitive to mold and mildew than horses, so you can feed them “junk” hay and they won’t get sick and you just make up the nutritional difference with grain. But remember one of our key feeding rules? Junk in, Junk out. We invest extra money in providing high-quality feed to provide a healthy environment for the animals.

Keys for a healthy environment?

• Clean and dry environment (we talked about that in our buildings and shelters post)
• Pasture and nutritious feed (we talked about that in our food and water post)
• Low stress (this means chasing is never ok, ever, and all visitors are taught “calm and quiet” to visit with the animals. this also means having the right equipment and set up for handling and confining when necessary.)
• Quarantine all new animals (and bring in as few as possible, to begin with!)

The idea here is to reduce the risks of your animals being exposed to parasites and bacteria that could make them sick and leave them strong enough to naturally fight off anything they are exposed to.

2. Match Your Animals to the Environment

I’ll cover this more in-depth with our next post on Choosing Livestock later this week but as I mentioned before if you’re feeding grass pick animals that thrive on grass. If you live in a tropical climate, go with a tropical breed (no Scottish Highland cattle in Brazil, for example). You’ll save yourself a lot of costs and heartache.

3. Create a Healthy Routine of Care

This one is pretty subjective and is going to be based on your specific values and vision for your farm. But here’s an example…

I know of several traditional commercial sheep operations that de-worm their animals every 4-6 weeks. I know of at least two “alternative treatment” farms that never use commercial chemical de-wormers on their sheep, and use a routine of pasture rotation, vinegar and garlic in the drinking water, and herbal de-wormers every couple of months to maintain the health of their flock. Both have pros and cons, risks and costs, and I’ll save that conversation for later. The point is that one relies on more preventative inputs and one relies on more treatment inputs.

To understand the cost of your small farm, you have to determine which path you’re going to take and research the costs of your inputs. Then to keep costs as low as possible for your choice, you need to develop a systematic approach to implementing it so you’re not over or under-treating at any time.

Just for the record, we go with a middle-of-the-road system. We use pasture rotations and sacrifice pastures with sanitation rest periods to minimize our chemical de-worming, but we do use chemical de-wormers on our sheep about 3-4 times a year. It depends on how wet the spring and fall are. (Feel free to email me if you have questions, I don’t want to get off track in this post about that.) This goes for most other livestock care too. Hoof trimming, tail docking, and ear tags so you know exactly who’s being treated for what, and how.

Routine care is also where I would put the hard decisions of whom to cull. Some animals are naturally more resistant to sickness or parasites–you want to build up your home flock with these animals and weed out the ones that are always sickly or struggling. This doesn’t have to mean “harvesting” the animal. Sometimes that animal is just not a good fit for your environment or management system. Sometimes you’ll have a ewe that just doesn’t do well with the pushing and shoving at the feed trough and is being constantly out-competed and underfed in the winter–but she might be just fine as a field companion for a lonely horse or in a smaller backyard hobby flock. Everyone (including your wallet!) will be happier with her culled from your flock and moved somewhere else.

4. Provide Expert Help When Needed

Notice I didn’t say “call the vet when needed!” Depending on your problem and your level of experience, your neighbor might be the only help you need. The point is to create a network of knowledge that you can tap into. I’ve gotten help from other farmers, books, Facebook groups, equipment suppliers, and yes, from our local large-animal vet. Some options cost more than others. The key is to build relationships so you can get help when you need it–because in a health emergency, timing is critical to success.

This was really expensive for us in the beginning because we simply didn’t know anyone else locally that knew anything about sheep and pretty much our only hands-on resource was our vet. Cha-ching! Our vet bills were neck and neck with our feed bills the first year or two! (Of course, we had fewer animals then too!)

Coincidence that our vet care expenses when down but our feed went up? Eh, maybe not. Once we found a steady supply of high-quality hay, had quality grass coming up, and hit a grain-supplementing routine that worked, our farm visits dropped to practically zero. Plus, we had developed a relationship with them–so they felt comfortable giving some phone consultation if we had something crop up, and that was free.

An unpleasant by-product of becoming more experienced is facing the decision that it’s not worth calling the vet for, we’ve done everything we can. Ouch. I hate this part. When you can call the vet, you have someone to back up your decision to, basically, give up. A professional who agrees with you. When you make that call yourself, it’s much more painful. However, it’s not just a straight cost-benefit ratio. We still call the vet, even when we know the animal will never be profitable again, if it’s highly likely they can save the animal’s life but we definitely can’t OR there’s something significant we think we can learn from them being out here for us to know next time for ourselves.

Here’s our decision matrix for calling the vet out to the farm…(you can download the pdf here)

You’ll also find an updated version of this worksheet in our Starting Your Homestead Printable Pack!

So that’s a lot to take in!

You’ll notice that I didn’t really get into any recommendations on what you should decide to do. This series is meant to be a decision-making tool, not a list of recommendations and directions. These are all things to think through as you’re making your plans and getting started. This is how to make your small farm a PLAN and not just a DREAM. This is what all that book stuff looks like out here on the ground! {smile}

Our series continues with links below–And be sure to sign up below for our newsletter and receive your FREE copy of our Finding Land Worksheet, to help you in your homestead planning!

I’d love to hear about and learn from your experience too! Did you have something you recommend or something that totally didn’t work for you that you’d like to share? 

Dollars and Cents of Starting a Small Farm

Starting a Small Farm: LAND

Starting a Small Farm: BUILDINGS and SHELTERS

Starting a Small Farm: FOOD and WATER

Starting a Small Farm: HEALTH and WELLNESS

Starting a Small Farm: CHOOSING LIVESTOCK  (Part 1) and (Part 2) and (Part 3)

Starting a Small Farm: THE HOMESTEAD GARAGE

Starting a Small Farm: SMALL FARM TAX BINDER

Starting a Small Farm: USING GOOGLE CALENDAR FOR MAINTENANCE RECORDS