Whether you’re raising a clutch of chickens in your back yard or hundreds of animals on a farmstead, it’s important to raise them right. This is the case from a business point of view: healthier animals tend to sell better – but also from an animal welfare point of view, seeing as a healthier animal is always going to be a happier animal. In this short guide, it will take you through the three key tips you’ll need to focus on to raise healthy and happy animals from your home or farm.
Food
There’s no factor more important for the health and vitality of your animals than the feed you give them. Each time your animals eat – be they chickens, pigs, or cows – they’ll apply that food to grow and develop, helping them become stronger and more valuable animals. As such, this isn’t an area that you should be scrimping on: it’s where you should be spending to produce healthier and more valuable livestock.
One of the ways to produce excellent feed is to enrich your animals’ normal meals with additional nutrients. Animal nutritional products can be found online from specialist providers who’ve made excellent mixtures to suit each type of farmyard or backyard animal. Many of the best are plant-based and eco-friendly. Invest in these nutritional packages to get more out of your animals.
Space
Gone are the days in which battery farming was seen as the most efficient and effortless way to farm animals. With consumers swaying towards organic produce – or at least those animals that have been given free rein to roam local fields and pastures – it’s looking like the days of granting no space to livestock are truly coming to an end.
In their stead is raising the idea that space and natural grazing is, in fact, wonderful for your animals. It produces healthier specimens that you can sell at a higher price. It makes your farm more of a visitor’s attraction as well as a business. And it’s a key way to differentiate your products from those competitors who are still granting their own animals less space to live.
Individual Health
You’ll often see your animals as a group rather than as a set of individuals. This is only natural, seeing as you’re constantly herding them into pens and counting them up until you’re sure your herd is at the right number. But doing this also neglects the fact that your animals may all be susceptible to individual health issues that it’s best to try to get on top of.
If you’re caring for over a dozen large animals, you’ll likely have some experience of what to look out for when an animal’s ill. You may well have a vet visit your farm or facility from time to time to check up on all of your animals. It’s important that you remain vigilant and invest enough time in the health and well-being of each of your animals if you’re to make your farming as efficient and healthy as possible.
These three tips will help to underscore the importance of space, feed, and individual health monitoring for your animals, helping you sell them for more when the time comes.
