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Lv 4
? asked in Home & GardenOther - Home & Garden · 5 years ago

Cows vs Horses?

I am looking to get a hobby/self-sufficient (cross my fingers) farm in the next 5 years and can t decide between getting cows or horses to keep the grass short. If I got horses, they d be ridden maybe once a week but their main job would be lawn maintenance. I would use one maybe two cows for milking, but I wouldn t be getting a mix of cows and horses.

The land will be at least 10 acres, maximum 100 acres in Queensland, Australia more towards the coast.

We will be getting goats though to eat weeds.

What are the pros and cons of each, plus a rough estimate of the annual cost of each.

Keep in mind I will have a massive veggie garden and plan on growing food for my livestock too!

5 Answers

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  • 5 years ago
    Favorite Answer

    A great combination I saw in Oklahoma was to rotate cows, goats and chickens in three pastures. First the cows to eat the grass, then the goats to eat the weeds, then the chickens to scatter all that manure with its insects around to fertilize the ground and get the grass to grow again. You can butcher the cows for meat or sell them for meat, milk the goats, make your own cheese, and sell and eat the eggs from the chickens as well as use the chickens for meat sources. The horses would work only if you were going to run a boarding operation.

  • ?
    Lv 6
    5 years ago

    Cows are much easier on your pastures and spread less weeds in their manure. Also easier to sell when the need arises. I vote for cows for your situation.

  • Snezzy
    Lv 7
    5 years ago

    You would be much better off raising cattle. I mean several--or even many--beef cattle, rather than milk cows. (Dairy cows are a huge task. There is hardly any time off from milking twice daily.) You would enjoy a positive cash flow, if you managed to stay on top of keeping fences in good shape and minding the other requirements of the business. You would quickly learn breeding, culling, transport, sales, and veterinary procedures.

    Also, for cattle you can use barbed wire, which is quite cheap and fairly easy to install, rather than some other kind of fencing. For horses you would need electric or rail fence. If you do go with horses, install the NZ-style high-tensile wire, but electrify it and add some sort of marker so that the horses can see it.

    Your goats will not respect any fence. If it's tight enough to keep them from getting through they will still manage to get caught in it. You will learn what "stuck goat" means as you try to assist one in getting unstuck whilst simultaneously avoiding getting a horn poked into your eyeball. In general, if you throw water at a fence and it goes through, so will goats. Oh, and goats need shelter from rain. They hate rain. Loathe it.

    >>MORE<<

    You're in Australia. Why not sheep? They are excellent at mowing the lawn, are readily available in Oz, well understood as well, and can teach you how to handle livestock much more easily than cattle or goats. You would also learn how to shear, something that every TRUE Australian should know. (Also true Enzeds and true Scotsmen.) Mind you, the world record for shearing a sheep is something like three seconds. No, that's not right. Go look it up. Still damned fast, whatever it is.

  • Holly
    Lv 4
    5 years ago

    Horses

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  • ?
    Lv 7
    5 years ago

    horses are fun but expensive, hoof trimming, vaccinations, vet bills, and unless you are using them to work the farm are more of a hobby with all that land I would think you would want to have some beef cattle, and maybe a milker or two, , You could use horses to move the cattle from pasture to pasture, I don't know the prices of hay or grain where you are so impossible for me to give you $

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