Look at your lands capabilities realistically

It never seems to fail, a person gets a little bit of acreage and boom!! Big ideas occur. To make small acreages be profitable you have to look at it realistically and realize you're probably not going to be able to raise much grassfed beef. Frankly, you're not going to be able to do much with cattle at all! Though you can graze a steer, it can't be the only thing you do.

The key to success for a small holding is diversity. You can actually "stack" different kinds of livestock. Why? Because different species have different grazing habits. For example, cows like grass and will eat some browse (brush, trees, vines, etc) but goats like browse and will eat some grass. Here's the kicker ... you don't need separate pens for them you need to use them on the pasture together.

Sheep, cows and goats are easy... what about pigs? Most people don't think of pigs as a pasture animal but they are. Granted for it to really work you need a breed that likes forbes. We once got a couple Yorks and put them on some of our best clover... they didn't bother eating the clover they just bulldozed the area. We were not new to pigs at this point. We'd been breeding heritage breed hogs for 2-3 years besides raising feeders. The hogs we raise love forbes. Absolutely love it! They're much happier when they have grass. Do they root? Sure! But they eat the tasty grass, roots and creepy crawlies first generally and THEN root it up. It really depends on their nutrient needs at the time. Otherwise, they do a fabulous job cleaning brush out of treed areas. It's also helpful for keeping the pigs cooler in the summer and sheltered in the winter. In fact, I was watching a sow strip the leaves off of a wild rose bush the other day. I've even used hogs to control wild blackberry bramble. The pigs thin it down so you can walk through it and grass grows between the bushes. They fertilized it nicely as well, got some awesome blackberries from that patch.

If you can't tell, I'm rather partial to pigs... I like all the animals but pigs have proven themselves to be useful on many levels. We used pig "tractors" to break the sod for our garden. It made it much easier to till with a garden tiller.

Anyway, now that I have gone on and on about pigs... back to the subject.

I had 5 acres before my current place. When we got it up to snuff we could get 5 grazings per growing season. We were running 3 dairy cows, 20-30 pigs and 50-100 chickens (both layers and broilers). We were maxed out. We were able to rent land but it never went well. What we never did do was vegetables. A market garden would have been more profitable on such a small acreage. Dairy is profitable but the people can be flaky and laws vary state to state.

I'm still working on those vegetables... whatever the case, realize that the best use of a small acreage is not necessarily to graze a few head of beef. The best use is to diversify and bring income from multiple venues which may include staying away from beef altogether.