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Why is culling livestock the best choice for your homestead?

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Kody Hanner
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Why cull?

Talking about culling is not always the most fun topics. However, it is a necessary topic to keep your homestead manageable, feed bills down, your livestock healthy, and your genetics strong. Culling is the act of reducing or controlling the size of something, such as a heard. However, many people view this as strictly euthanizing the animal and that is not always case, nor the purpose.

When to cull?

Culling is usually done in the fall to keep the herd manageable through the winter. When animals are unhealthy going into the harsh winter month they may require more barn space, additional higher quality feeds, or may even pass away. This is a huge waste of money, when the animal could have been sold or bartered, given away, butchered, or simply put down to avoid the wasted cost the weaker animal may need.

*Disclaimer, I am not referring to 35-year-old gelding that you have chosen to let live out his life on the farm or the sweet old hound that doesn’t even bark at the mailman anymore.

I’m referring to the old nanny goat that hasn’t produced a kid in two years, the heifer that has come up open twice now, or the sow that only has five piglets per litter. These animals are no longer providing to pay for themselves. Sometimes, they will have a purpose in different ways. The nanny goat might actually need to be euthanized, but she might also have value reducing fire danger.

My Scenario
I have two sows that my family have discussed as culls. Below are their stories and how we came to our decisions.

Sow #1 – Oreo is a 3-4 year old Hampshire that we purchased from a local 4-H family two years ago. We bought her already bred at the right time to farrow show pigs for our kids the following year. Our hopes were that she would provide the three piglets that my kids needed and we would be able to sell several others to cover our feed costs. Unfortunately, she had three piglets that round. Our kids have learned a lot from her in assisting with farrowing, AI, and helping piglets nurse because she is a very docile sow! 

The rest of her story

She has had two litters since her first on our homestead and both times only had four or five piglets, but if she farrows at the same time one of our other sows who usually has about 16 piglets, Oreo happily takes on extra babies and has saved some too.

Sow and piglets

Sow #2 – We call her “alien pig”. Last spring at the start of the pandemic when many large farms were having to euthanize piglets we got in touch with a farm out of Nebraska and were able source a large number or piglets for our community and make enough money to feed out these pigs and sell for a much higher fee. This was a wonderful venture for us to be able to invest further in our homestead. A few of the pigs didn’t sell by butcher time, so we decided to hold on to a couple of the slow growers to butcher for ourselves. 

Things don’t always go as planned

Shortly after that, our boar got out and bred a couple of the gilts that were left. One of them finally hit a growth spurt, farrowed 12 healthy piglets and was a wonderful mother. We decided to keep her for now to breed butcher pigs (not show pigs because we don’t know her breed). The other pig, commonly known as “alien pig” due to slow growth and odd build, did not take that round. Our busy schedule didn’t allow for her to get butchered last spring and over the summer she was bred. We were excited when she farrow 13 healthy piglets. 

This is when things got worse!

Then while we were gone for a conference and our younger kids were handling the feeding she dried herself up and stopped feeding the babies. We are actually currently still trying to save as many as we can through syringe feeding, but sadly have lost about half of them. I will update when I can.

Which sow would you keep and which one would you butcher?

Our answer:

Technically we could butcher both to feed our family. But our choice is to keep Oreo who has not only provided to use, but saved us money and to butcher the sow that has wasted money and may not have provided to the homestead.

Sell

If the animal is in good healthy and reasonable age, they may be a good animal to sell or barter. Ask yourself if its worth it to keep that red angus when you’re trying to cultivate a pure black angus herd. Selling the red angus could be enough to buy several tons of feed for maintaining the rest of the herd.

Change Jobs

Sometimes the animal can stay right where its at and simply change jobs. Such as a milk cow that doesn’t produce enough milk to support your family, but breeds back every year could be what we call a beef maker. Breed her every year to produce a future butcher steer or heifer.  

Butchering

Often butchering in the fall was part of the plan all along and is strategic culling. Many people purchase piglets, goats, or chickens in the spring solely with the intent to fill their freezers in the fall. If this is the plan and you aren’t going to butcher yourself, make sure you contact your local butcher well in advance to reserve your slot. Otherwise, you might be feeding this animal well into the cold weather where they aren’t going to continue gaining as much in an effort to keep themselves warm.

Euthanasia

Some animals are beyond being able to maintain themselves nutritionally or to be quality meat for your family. This is when often hard choices need to be made, especially when these are often older animals that you might be attached to. One thing we do, is to go ahead and euthanize the animal, but instead of disposing of the meat we will make dog food out of it. This way they are still going for a purpose and supporting our family in a different way. Another option to consider is local wildlife rehabilitation facilities will take culled animals as donation to feed the carnivores that they currently have. Unfortunately, sometimes your have an animal that is too sick, has an infection, or serious injury that will just need to be put down and buried on your property.

Your homestead will thank you!

Overall, with making the choice to cull or butcher animals on your homestead you will end up with healthier and stronger animals. With that, you will save money on feed, supplements, and veterinarian costs by selective culling. Remember you are probably homesteading to feed your family and annual butchering and culling is part of that process. 

Download my Homestead Livestock Culling Decision Chart for a handy guide for when you’re trying to make those hard decisions.

Culling checklist
Homestead winter preparation

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