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What livestock is the hardest?
We have ranked the most common homestead animals, and we will go through easy to hard, not just based off our opinion, but based off HUNDREDS of homesteads who ranked these animals easy... medium... or HARD!

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Jack calling Turkeys what they are... @TheMindfulHomestead

Kelsey who said goodbye to goats @RoughandTumbleFarmhouse

Rachel's Husband... The Aquarist! @aquariumsmaintainedbyandy8408

[philippopov]

Horses; a dirt bike that can be mad at you….

[madelinejohnstone]

I grew up on a dairy goat farm and my mom always says “Goats come into the world trying to find creative ways to leave it” 😂

[Pantsdownbrown]

Regarding beef cattle: I'm not a homesteader, but I inspect rural roads and bridges. One day a few years ago I was inspecting a wooden bridge and heard a guy loudly cursing. Finished the inspection went to check and see if the guy was okay. He was mending a barbed fence, muttering he needed to electrify it and was "gonna turn that sumbitch into hamburger." He had one particular cow that kept tearing up his fence and running off, letting the others out. Helped him look for the escapist and we found him about 30 minutes later drinking from a nearby creek.

Also, turned out we were distant cousins. Me and the farmer, not me and the cow.

[RedScareClair]

I still remember going to a petting zoo as a kid and all of the animals had sweetly taken pellets from my hand. Then, I got to the goat. The goat stood up on his hind legs, stretched his neck out and promptly snatched the entire pellet bag out of my hand. He ate the paper bag and all. That single experience told me all I ever needed to know about goats 🤣

[cIimber]

For those who want a quick overview of the animals mentioned in the video:
2:12 Chicken 91 6 3
3:10 Quail 74 18 8
4:04 Rabbit 70 28 2
4:51 Duck 65 30 5
5:37 Turkey 55 35 10
7:58 Fish 50 37 12
10:05 Goose 46 54 0
11:03 Guinea 45 40 15
12:17 Beef Cattle 27 61 11
14:45 Pig 25 61 14
17:59 Sheep 24 55 21
19:15 Dairy Cow 20 50 30
22:41 Alpaca 22 44 33
23:28 Horse 11 54 34
25:15 Donkey 14 50 35
26:52 Goat 16 46 38
31:48 Bee 13 32 54

[kralvltavin]

😂I literally started with goats! Won't disagree that they're hard. But I'm actually glad I got goats first because the ease of the other animals just made the journey more rewarding

[JillianShanahan]

I think pigs are harder than goats. About 3 days in, my pig escaped and had the entire town (including police) chasing him 😂

[parsonsfamilyfarm]

We have been homesteading for just over a year, and jumped in hard and fast. Having never done any of this before, I feel like we are a pretty good control group for animal difficulty. As total newbies, here are the animals that we have raised ranked in order from easiest to hardest for first timers:

Layer ducks: easy fencing, minimal housing requirements and don't tear up the flower beds.

Laying hens: close second to ducks. They roam more and can jump/fly over fencing and will scratch exactly where you don't want them to. Easier watering and brooding than ducks though.

Hair Sheep: half of the year I practically forgot that we had them. They eat grass and hang out. Easy on fencing and don't roam.

Broad breasted turkeys: they don't fly and are easy to fence. Butchering is about as easy as chickens, but you get 4x the meat per bird.

Meat chickens: would be #1 other than the butchering work. I love that they're a 2 month commitment and you're done. John Suskovich chicken tractors for the win!

Beef: on a day-to-day basis, beef is one of the very lowest effort level animals we have, the issue is in the big things. You can't put a cow in the back of a minivan. Bulls are big and can be dangerous. I had to get 40 four foot round bales that each weigh 800 lbs and butchering requires either specialized equipment, or a professional. I do love a good steak though...

Dairy goats: I really wanted to say that our dairy goats were easy, but when I compared them to the rest, they are a little bit harder than most. We have the best goats. We bought oberhasli goats from a local dairy and they are amazing. They don't challenge our fencing, they're quiet and healthy and so far haven't tried to poison themselves. We got a Saanan buck who is a super chill guy and just had a successful round of kids. They aren't nearly the challenge I was expecting them to be, but the daily attention required to keep them friendly and milkable, along with the actual milking does make them more work than most others.

Heritage turkeys: our heritage turkeys fought like crazy, were impossible to fence, would jump on our roof, cars, barn, trees, etc. They insisted on roosting in the most dangerous places. We started with 15 heritage poults, 5 died right away for no apparent reason, 1 was pecked to death at about 2 months and 3 ended up getting eaten by coyotes. They destroyed our fruit tree starts and flower beds. Uggh.


Honey bees: I am allergic to bees, so my wife handled this one. She is a brilliant woman does amazing research, keeps impeccable notes and is amazingly diligent. We had the coldest, wettest spring I've ever seen and they all died. It was so disheartening to feel like you could do everything right and not a single one of the 5000 bees would live. Bees require a whole bunch of specialized gear and an entire suit to make sure you don't die. It honestly feels to me like some sort of tribal religious ritual, where you done the special attire, blow smoke into the sky, dance around a little and pray for good weather. I firmly believe that my wife will be successful with this at some point, but it feels like it requires not only a tremendous amount of knowledge and skill, but many factors will outside of your control.

Also, my skin feels all itchy when I watch them.

[coreyknowles]

As a professional horse trainer who also has goats, no way are horses easier than goats. A rude or poorly trained goat won't kill you. They don't break your foot if they step on you. Horses also have parasite issues, like to escape, and die because of tummy aches. Or, more likely, step on a slightly sharp rock and become a permanently lame so you have to feed them and let them destroy your pasture and fencing for the next 30 years without getting any use from them.

[milesfromnowhere]

Sitting here watching this with my goats, who've had zero issues with anything but my cheapskate choice in fencing. They were my first choice in livestock, and I have zero regrets. Strong personalities, and I love that.

[Lionrhod]

One critter you didn't mention is Yaks. I'm going to guess they rank somewhere around goats. :) Granted, we got our yaks under somewhat false pretenses. The sellers outright lied and told us how they were hand tamed and all. We were planning on raising yaks for milk and wool, as well as packing. Turns out these were yaks that had been raised as brood mothers for a meat farm. We bought mamma, older baby and newly born baby as a package deal. Far from being hand-tamed, mama Yonkers was an ornery, unfriendly and suspicious animal who'd obviously been abused. She was terrified of humans and hated us. And that's what she taught her daughters! And talk about escape artists! They got out of their enclosure 3 times in 2 years, and each time became more challenging to locate and recapture. (Though the last time, after a 2 month walkabout, they actually showed up asking, "you got water?") It took us 2 years, but eventually, we did Forgive me if I, also, chuckle a bit about having done your research prove to Yonkers that we were trustworthy. On one good side, super-easy birthing. We bred Zoozoo the older daughter, and the birth took about 15 minutes. Just long enough (as first time yak grandparents) to realize the vet was an hr and a half away and begin to freak, and then Ferdie was struggling to her legs and making her way over to me and giving me kisses. (You haven't lived till you've been kissed by a 10 minute old yak!) Sadly our experiment in yak-steading was brought to a close when mom-in-law developed alzheimers and we had to return to FL. We at least managed to find the girls a forever home that promised to never slaughter them for meat.

[melindawolfUS]

I think your local environment can also make certain animals easier or harder.
I live in a desert in a climate closer to what a lot of goats evolved to live in while lots of other animals struggle in the heat and don't thrive. My rabbits are considered the most heat-tolerant breed but they're lots of work in the summer because I have to give them ice packs to keep them outside in the shade of my porch. My friend has chickens that randomly die in the heat even-though she has given them a cooling kiddy pool. In the desert we have less pest pressure, far fewer mosquitos, flies and even low exposure to parasites (hardly any natural grass to transfer their eggs). We don't get ANY ticks or fleas. They just don't survive. But some livestock don't either.... so it's a trade-off.

[blancaperezAZ]

I recently asked in a local group how much is it costing to keep a family dairy cow and the whole thread turned into the ministers of goating evangelizing on why I need to convert to goats instead! I was like chill out people I want a freaking COW 😂

[R-TrainExpress]

Pro tip for any potential hog farmers: have the hog pin enclosed in a bigger pen with wide open areas. This will keep them entertained and ways from danger long enough for you to notice they are out

[monkeypuzzlefarm]

I do aquaponics and it is very easy to raise the fish BUT it is dependent on which fish species you choose, your climate and how efficient your setup is. Some people could find it difficult.

[phattzdmann]

Just a tip for new homesteaders:

NEVER GET RID OF THAT BROODY CHICKEN!

If you want to get a better success rate with any hatching or raising of any bird, have the broody chicken do it. I raised my turkeys with the help of a chicken and I have never had the losses that other people have, or when the turkey hens try and hatch chicks. The chicken hen will also teach the chicks to forage and will keep them alive! A broody chicken hen is worth her weight in feed if you want to hatch and raise other birds even the tricky ones!

[bradsimpson]

A note on aquaponics systems: most people who struggle are in a rush. It takes time to figure out the right location for a pond, it takes time to establish bacterial colonies for proper filtration, and lots of people don't understand the limitations inherent to selecting aquaponics crops.

But if you're patient, do the research up front, and are willing to make the front-end investment, they will keep you in salad greens and soft-stemmed herbs all season long. We keep ornamental koi, which makes us a little bit of money(I buy a few small koi to fill a secondary pond every year and grow them to re-sell), gives us a great gathering point for barbecues, a nice stress-reliever place to sit in the evening, and winters off(they hibernate when it gets too cold and we transfer them to smaller holding tanks indoors).

If I add up EVERY SECOND of actual work from last season - filling, draining, and cleaning the pond, feeding up to five times a day, wellness checks, flushing filters, testing water, everything - I bet that I've got less than twenty hours of work between April and October, and another three during their hibernation months.

I think the biggest difficulty(aside from people being in a rush) is the expense, because it absolutely isn't cheap, and the fact that a lot of the skillset to managing a pond doesn't cross over with the general livestock skills most people being surveyed have acquired. Poultry is poultry is poultry, and a lot of the differences between chickens and turkeys and quail and guineas is in the minutia, but a ton of that knowlege is transferable. Same with waterfowl, and same with large pastured livestock. Fish are very much in a different category, and it doesn't mesh as cleanly.

[itsok_annabelleishere]

When it comes to honeybees I believe in response to the world-wide problem is that instead of trying to domesticate bees we should support them. Build them insect houses, leave sugar water out, plant helpful flowers, and don't support commercial brands that don't keep bees correctly. This is just an opinion I've gathered from research. I hope you all have an amazing day or night, thank you!

[lajlijthoj]

Here's something that's not asked often. What tools/equipment make homestead life easier? What about gear and clothing, if any? I'm sure you wouldn't want to be in a muddy paddock with sandals and shorts 😂
I'm honestly looking for a really great pair of overalls that can breathe well on hot summer days but be durable enough to crawl around and sit on the pasture with my lgd and livestock.

[baac]

I was hoping to see bison, camels, emu, water buffalo, and ostriches get ranked. Hopefully y'all do a part 2 to this video and rank them. Love the videos gives inspiration to new homesteaders