If you are a small space homesteader, you might be thinking that there really aren’t any animals you can successfully raise with your limited room. Don’t despair! There are several quality choices of small livestock for the homestead that you can learn to raise. Here are some simple suggestions for five homestead animals for apartment, urban, and country small space homesteaders.
Cows are great, goats are awesome, and alpacas are the best! However, if you simply don’t have the room for those larger homestead animals, you’ll need to focus on the smaller livestock.
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Small Livestock for Small Homesteads
We’re going to provide you with five suggestions for different small space homesteaders. There are others we could have chosen, but we’ll share with you why we think these five will be winners for those of us who have limited space.
The small livestock we’ve chosen are:
- Composting worms in vermicomposting systems
- Black Soldier Flies & Mealworms – yes, more bugs!
- Poultry – chickens, ducks, or quail
- Bees
- Rabbits
We’ve also included a short section on certain animals we didn’t choose to put on this list and why they didn’t make the small livestock cut!
Incidentally, we share a number of links to learn more about each animal outlined in the body of this article, but you may want to read the following post first to be sure you’re ready for livestock in general.
–>>Stop! You’re Not Ready for Homestead Animals<<–
Small or not, livestock are a responsibility, as much as they are a blessing. It’s our duty to be as prepared as we can be before we bring them onto our land.
Other Livestock Resources For When You’re Ready
Raising Alpacas on the Homestead
Homestead Dogs: Do You Need a Livestock Guard Dog
10 FAQs for Homestead Livestock
The Best Apartment Small Livestock
Whether you live in an apartment, duplex, or tiny home, in some urban areas you won’t even have a backyard to call your own. You have to make use of every square inch because you are an intrepid small-small space homesteader!
Have you thought about getting worms? Composting worms, that is! Here are a few reasons to consider composting with worm, aka vermicomposting.
- Even if you garden is relegated to your patio and indoor plants, you’re still going to need to feed those plants quality compost.
- You can use your kitchen scraps to feed your composting worms to produce food for your garden without keeping a huge, messy composting bin outside.
- Vermicomposting can be done inside under a sink or in a temperate utility room.
- Composting worms keep composting materials out of the landfill.
- You can apply vermicompost directly to your potting soil or you can make a compost tea with it.
- Should you have extra vermicompost, you can gift it to your garden nerd friend and they’ll love you!
- You could also sell or trade surplus worm compost with any garden enthusiast you know.
Vermicomposting systems can range in size but they’re adaptable to your space. Most people who build their own vermicompost bins use small to medium sized tote boxes. The countertop models of what they call “worm towers” that you can purchase for vermicomposting can typically fit on your counter.
Please read our article “Vermicomposting Q&A” to decide if this is something you’d like to try on you micro homestead.
FYI, vermicomposting can be done on any size homestead and one system is designed to be used outside in a typical vegetable garden.
Small City Lot Backyard Homestead
Be sure to read our article about being completely prepared for homestead animals before you get them so that you can remember to first check the rules and regulations of your city. Cities have plenty of rules about what you can and can’t do on your land, so be legal before you try to be anything else!
After that, consider raising more worms (different kind than composting) and chickens!
Soldier Flies & Mealworms: Super Small Livestock
Black soldier flies (abbreviated to BSF) are not like house flies at all, and in fact, exude a scent that chases house flies away from your barnyard! To save money on chicken feed (chickens are highlighted in the next section), you can set up a simple system to grow your own black soldier fly larvae.
The bucket-type system that you fill with compostable materials allows the parent flies to grow up their larvae to the stage where they’re ready for your chickens to eat. You don’t even have to touch the larvae because they have a natural instinct to start moving on their own and they will, literally, crawl right into the waiting mouths of your hungry chickens.
Breeding barrels can be completely DIYed and are no bigger than a water cooler, in most cases (unless you want to produce lots of BSF!).
These critters are also self-sustaining, so after your initial purchase of parent stock, you won’t need to buy anything else if you live in a temperate winter climate. Some cold winter climates will see successful renewal of their black soldier fly populations if deep bedding is provided over winter, but it can be hit and miss.
Similarly, you can raise mealworms for your flock. These guys gross me out for some reason, but I don’t mind the black solider flies. I think I really value the flies because they help control my other fly populations which can be Biblical during the summer.
Don’t let me dissuade you from trying to raise your own mealworms, though! Even if you don’t have your own chickens yet, you can create an easy income stream for your homestead by selling your mealworms to other backyard chickens keepers.
These worms have become super chic with chicken enthusiasts because of their many health benefits for the flock.
BSF & Mealworm Resources
To learn a little bit more about these two handy bugs, please visit:
Bloom Where Your Planted – Black Soldier Fly – A Sustainable Option for Your Homestead Flock
Delaney Chicken – How to Raise Black Soldier Fly and Mealworms for Chickens
Small Livestock with Feathers
If your city/county will allow them, chickens make an excellent backyard small livestock option. With as few as 3-6 hens, you can enjoy fresh eggs.
Chickens perform other homestead functions:
- They lightly till your soil with their scratching and pecking.
- Chickens will also happily eat insects emerging from your soil, many of which can be harmful to your garden produce.
- They will also scratch and turn your compost for you, if you allow them access to your compost pile.
- Their manure is highly useful after it’s been composted for a few months to cool its high nitrogen content.
- Chickens provide the opportunity for children to have small livestock chores that are safer than other homestead options (like corralling the bull, for example).
- They also provide entertainment and companionship for humans.
The fewer chickens you have, the less housing you’ll need, but the fewer eggs you’ll be able to harvest daily. The point is, you can adapt your flock to the legal requirements of your homestead, as well as the space.
If chickens aren’t your thing, consider homestead ducks or even quail. Both of these birds lay eggs, eat bugs, and poop out useful manure. They’re also both suitable for eating.
Chicken, Duck, & Quail Resources
To learn more about raising homestead chickens, please visit the following:
Backyard Chickens for Beginners
For duck information, please visit the following:
Raising Ducks for Meat & Eggs on the Homestead
Why Ducks Might Not Be Right For You
Why Ducks Might Be Right For You
For quail information, please visit the following:
Why You Should Consider Quail Farming on Your Homestead, from The 104 Homestead. If you end up enjoying that read, this link will take you to The 104 Homestead’s entire quail library Jess has the best information on backyard quail that I’ve found online!
Humbly Rooted Home also makes good points about why you want to consider raising quail on your homestead.
Small Country Homestead
Just because you live in the country doesn’t mean you’ll have acres and acres at your disposal. Many country residents homestead on modest sized lots in small, country towns.
Also, don’t assume that because you’re in a rural town, you’ll be able to raise whatever you want in the way of small livestock even if you have an acre or more. Surprising as it may seem, there might be regulations prohibiting the keeping of livestock in your rural town.
That’s why the first item on the list of things to be sure you do before bringing homestead animals onto your land is to check the law! Are there regulations, zoning rules, neighborhood rules, or any other legal restriction on your owning small livestock? Find that out first!
In our small town in rural Missouri, it was illegal to keep backyard chickens until just recently (which is part of why we no longer live there). The prohibition was a result of a flawed idea that backyard chickens were just too “country”, too un-chic.
With homesteading taking the country by storm, those laws are slowly changing and my tiny town finally attuned to the times and have started to slowly allow backyard chickens. (Not ducks or turkey, but I guess we’ll work on that next.)
However, even when chickens were taboo, honey bees were allowed!
Do Bees Count as Small Livestock?
Absolutely bees count as small livestock and they’re some of the best livestock you’ll ever work with! Honey bees are a vital part of a healthy garden and orchard ecology.
Bees aren’t only vital to the success of our backyard homesteads. They’re responsible for pollinating an estimated 70% of the world’s food crops. Anything we can do to support the honey bee populations should be considered of great benefit to all mankind.
Can you tell that I really love honey bees?
I’ve been keeping honey bees on and off for 30 years and I can honestly say that there are few small livestock ventures that have been more fulfilling. Like any livestock, they have their challenges and you might fail and time or two.
But I can promise that the first time you watch baby bees emerge, the first time you smell warm honey as you harvest it from fragrant bees wax comb, the first time you see your garden harvests increase, all those failures and hard work will be worth it!
An apiary, or bee yard, for one or two hives doesn’t need to take up any more than a few square feet. I do suggest you put a simple fence and gate around your beehives to keep out animals and curious children.
You can certainly teach your children to tend the bees with you, but it’s good to have boundaries to keep the humans and the bees safe.
FYI, many cities allow for backyard beekeeping, so if you’re still in a city, be sure to look into that!
Bee Resources
To learn more about bee keeping on the homestead, please visit:
5 Homesteader Reasons to Find a Local Beekeeper
If you decide you’re not ready for upwards of 70,000 stinging insects in your backyard, but you’d still like your veggies and fruits pollinated, please consider mason bees. These gentle, non-stinging bees are fantastic pollinators and you can create a special house and habitat to encourage them onto your homestead.
Make a Bee House in a Bee Friendly Garden
How to Attract Mason Bees to Fruit Trees
Rabbits are Small Livestock – They Even Poop Small!
Rabbits are, obviously, small livestock and their offspring are similarly small. Some of the benefits of homestead rabbits include:
- Sustainable meat source – they provide a very steady stream of meat!
- Their manure is “cool” and can be used as compost in the garden immediately.
- Chickens can forage under rabbit cages to remove any fly or other larvae.
- Rabbits are very efficient eaters, meaning that their convert their feed to muscle mass very well.
- You can raise rabbits on sprouted grain if you don’t have “pasture” area.
- Rabbits can easily be bred to provide meat year round.
- They can provide a source of homestead income in meat, pelts, compost, and breeding stock.
If you keep them in cages, their cages should be a minimum of twice as long as your rabbit is when they’re fully stretched out. This is usually around 3 ft.
Bigger is always better, though, and this is just their living quarters. Rabbits also need room to hop around – something like a pasture area for goats but rabbit-sized.
You can also keep rabbits on grass in groups called colonies with something akin to a chicken coop structure for protection. This usually requires more square footage, FYI.
Are Rabbits Better on Grass or in Cages?
Ah, this is THE question when it comes to raising homestead rabbits. There are several good reasons to raise rabbits in cages:
- Predators have a harder time getting into cages.
- It’s harder (a lot harder) to control breeding in rabbits raised in colonies on grass.
- It’s in the nature of a rabbit to tunnel and dig, thereby allowing them to escape your enclosure.
- If you live in an area with bot flies, they can quickly enter a rabbit and start laying eggs. These will kill your rabbit rapidly in a most horrific way. (I never want to live through that experience again.)
The good news is that if you don’t want to or don’t have the space to raise rabbits on pasture, you can allow them grass time during the day with a secured open bottom cage or fencing.
Rabbit Resources
The most common reason to keep homestead rabbits is to raise them for meat, which Farmgirl in the Making can help you do with her article 13 Tips to Raising Rabbits for Meat. She talks about housing options and start up costs, among other many useful topics.
Practical Self Reliance has some helpful information about staring rabbits on pasture.
Homestead Rabbits has courses you can take, if online learning is your thing.
There’s a great source on Facebook, if you’re there. Though a general livestock page, SunStone Orchard & Rabbitry has some of THE best rabbit content I’ve ever read anywhere, and certainly in the online world.
The information you get here is down to earth, real, raw, and high quality. I keep waiting for her to write a rabbit book, but she’s too busy living her awesome life!
Why Not Nigerian Dwarf Goats?
Your homesteader heart may be desiring after backyard dairy goats. I feel that; backyard dairy goats were among my first small livestock. Nigerian Dwarf goats (aka Niggies) were the first breed we tried.
These delightful goats are small livestock personified. They eat, play, sleep, poop, and birth small.
However, here are a few things to think about when considering Niggies for your small homestead:
- Goats do require a shelter and that can take up more space than a few beehives. If you’re going to milk them, it’s quite handy to have a milking pen, especially if you live in extreme climate areas.
- Furthermore, goats are social animals which means you’ll need at least two goats for optimal mental and physical health.
- Also, to keep them in milk, you will need to breed them. Babies, for however long they’re on your homestead, take up space.
- Furthermore, goats should be moved around the lot to prevent pathogen build up. Either have a movable shelter, or two shelters to give pen areas time to lie fallow.
It’s important to consider the size of the livestock itself, but it’s equally important to consider the size of the built environment that surrounds that animal.
How Much Space Do Nigerian Dwarf Goats Need?
Spacing requirements for goats are kind of all over the map because there are so many variables. Niggies certainly take up less space but there are other factors to consider.
- For example, some does or bucks are big, fat pigs when it comes to using the hay feeder and can crowd out and dominate other goats in the herd. You may find you have fewer headaches in the barnyard if you provide two feeders or options to hay feeders.
- Also, you’ll often read that goats can be kept in a three-sided shelter and, while that’s true, you may find it doesn’t work best in your climate. In extreme weather areas, providing a more robust structure with protection from hot sun, wet weather, freezing drafts, and snow will equal a healthier herd.
Healthy goats equal less work for you overall.
At any rate, for Niggies, 15 sq. ft. in a shelter and at least 300 sq. ft. in a yard area will allow them to move, play, and shelter well. Farmyard Fables has slightly different numbers but aptly discusses how much space a Nigerian dwarf goat needs.
Why Not Sheep as Small Livestock?
Sheep require a lot of the same infrastructure as goats but there’s another dimension to fiber animals that needs to be considered. They’re fiber animals.
- Sheep, Angora goats, and alpacas all require shearing at least once a year. Do you have space to perform this function on site?
- If not, do you have a livestock trailer to transport your fiber animal to the shearer? Do you have a place on the homestead to store a trailer?
- Another important point to consider with both sheep and goats is their maniacal fixation with getting out of fenced areas. Seriously, what is their problem? Why can’t they just stay where you put them?!
- You will need – need, need, need – tight fencing (barbed wire isn’t closed enough) and you will need to check the fencing every day.
- Ruminants also require rotational grazing, which means you’ll need to move these animals to new ground frequently to prevent overgrazing any area and to break up pathogen build up in the soil.
This isn’t necessarily a deal breaker and you don’t have to give up on ruminants altogether! You might not have enough of your own land, but it’s possible you have a neighbor that can provide grazing area for your animals in exchange for the mowing.
- So, what do you think? Which small livestock will you choose, if any?
- Are you able to take any options off your wish list?
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Just FYI: rabbits are not kosher, just so you know if that might be a concern
Thank you for sharing that for our readers for whom that is a concern!