My Livestock MISTAKES – They Are Gone

the ghosts are gone the chickens are all gone the Becks are gone and EDD is gone five of our baby chicks are gone and all the remains are these five workings and one coach in so what happened well I'm going to tell you about the big mistake that we made on our urban homestead when it comes to livestock so for those of you who are new to the channel we live on a small one acre lot where the majority of our property isn't in the front of our house we basically have no back yard and about two years ago we decided to start homesteading on this property we started off in 2016 by getting seven laying hens two of which died those went really well and we decided that we were going to expand our efforts to become more self sustainable by getting goats so in March of 2017 we got the minimal amount of goats that we could get which was two we got two Nubians one two year old milking doe and then one three month old baby and then because we had a market for rainbow eggs we decided to get a few more rainbow layers chickens and because we also wanted to have provide our own meat or at least to these chickens we decided to get into a dual-purpose heritage breed called the Dorking we also like duck eggs so we got the bare minimum in ducks we got one male one female this would provide us with duck eggs but also allow us to expand by breeding at some point in the future but not on this property and because our property is so small we can't really have any sort of livestock Guardian animal here as far as dogs or llamas or donkeys or anything like that but what we could do was a goose and so we decided to go with a tufted Roman goose which we hoped would help protect it or at least notify us when there was any kind of predator attacks such as hawks so we thought we were doing everything right we thought we were kind of keeping things fairly small with where we wanted to go with it and doing what we could here one acre certainly enough property to sustain that amount of birds and the goats but we made some sticks along the way the very first mistake we made and this was the biggest one was the very same day that we put out our video on why we can't move we were approached by a neighbor who told us that we were in violation of a local covenants and neighborhood covenants saying that we could not have goats on our property now those of you guys that watched our video on where we brought home our goats the very first thing I mentioned is how we did our research when we bought this house we did our research on whether or not we were allowed to have animals on the property and then we did it again before we got chickens and we did it again before we got goats so what happened well I'll tell you what we did right and then I'll tell you what we did wrong what we did right is we checked the county for the local for the county zoning laws we check the town for the town zoning laws any rules and regulations around that we checked our deed for our house to make sure that there was nothing written in there saying that we couldn't have any livestock on the property we also went to our neighbors and casually mentioned that we were thinking about getting chickens thinking about getting goats not really asking permission but just sort of feeling the mouse and there was no objections at the time and we also looked around at the properties around us and we have guy that has several goats up on the corner a couple properties and it horses back here guided breeding dogs over there and we have people that chickens all over so what went wrong well it turns out that our neighbor who was upset over the noise that our goat was making and the fact that there are chickens free-ranging found a covenants written back in 1971 that when this whole property was to be dairy lands and it was sold to be developed those Lots for properties residential properties and a covenants was written to kind of just sort of keep up the neighborhood basically stating the types of materials that houses could be built out of and also what kind of livestock was allowed on the property and in this document it says that as far as four-legged animals the only four-legged animals that were allowed were household pets with the exception of several Lots in the neighborhood which were allowed to have certain types of pets such as horses and whatnot our law it was not one of them in addition the guy that has goats up in the corner is part of this neighborhood and so that kind of excluded him from this covenant as well now this covenant is one that it's not an HOA or anything like that but it's a one written back in 1971 that renews every 10 years and it basically is a majority rules covenant so when we moved in here 10 years ago which even if we knew about this covenant that we were the only people on the street I was on a guy up on the corner and that guy would couldn't care less what we did we couldn't care less what he did but since then over the last 3 years this area has become highly highly developed there have been six brand-new houses built that were a half million dollar homes and there are four being built as we speak it has become very very developed and the stereotype the people moving in are not the homesteading type not the type to appreciate livestock and certainly we were called out on the fact that we were depreciating the value of our neighbor's home by having livestock so another thing to mention is that when we moved here ten years ago we weren't on the homesteading path we didn't buy this property to homestead on I know there's a lot of misconceptions about that in our video on why we can't move you know why we didn't buy up the property around us or why we didn't think that when we bought the house we weren't planning on hosting we just came up we just decided to start homesteading two years ago so just keep that in mind as I'm go through all of the mistakes that we made so the very first mistake that we made obviously is not doing our due diligence in researching everything thoroughly we thought we did but there apparently was a blanket statement in our deed that just says that our property is under any covenant PSA's that are filed in our county we didn't actually go to our county to research if there was anything on file turns out there was our bed and this particular covenant is basically just a majority rules covenants and ten years ago even if we were homesteading we were basically the majority so it wouldn't have been an issue but now we are no longer the majority and like I said the houses that have come up around here are not the type of houses that appreciate homesteading or livestock's so the second mistake that I made was in choosing the wrong goat I think ultimately this was probably our biggest downfall other than not doing our research thoroughly now there are loud breeds of goats and there are quite breezy goats then there are just loud goats and there are just quite ghosts as far as personality we picked the loudest breed and we probably picked one of the loudest ghosts of that breed and which she got in a mood when she was in heat she was hungry she let everybody know it and she was very very vocal and I really can't blame a lot of people were not really I really can't blame a lot of people for for not appreciating the sounds of the farm especially a screaming goat because you can equate it to a dogs barking non-stop for two hours so I really can't blame people for that but certainly our second mistake would be in choosing a very very loud goat the third mistake we made was in not being inconspicuous as I mentioned earlier the majority of our property is in our front yard and because we really wanted to do well by our birds by pasture raising them by moving them around as much as possible so they had fresh grass and fresh bugs that meant moving around a hundred and sixty four foot electric fence in our front yard throughout the year that's not exactly inconspicuous they call backyard chickens backyard chickens for a reason we were kind of flaunting the fact that we had chickens so putting them in our front yard when they should have been in our back yard even though we really don't have a backyard was probably our second mistake and then also when we decided fruit to free-range are birds I think that pretty much was the icing on the cake even though the birds stayed on our property it was actually you know the day that we did that as well that we were approached about about being in violation of a covenant horse mistake we made was in putting up permanent structures we do when we got into homesteading that we were only going to be able to do so much here on this property and that we were eventually going to move when you start putting up permanent structures you start investing a lot of money into whatever livestock it is you're getting so for us it was goats and we put a lot of money I think I was like eight hundred bucks into fencing and then not to mention the shed and everything else for the goats and if you're going to get into something like livestock you're putting in permanent structures you need to make sure that the cost of those structures are going to amortize over the course of many many years in order to pay that off so you need to spread the cost of that investment over multiple years which means you need to be on that property for multiple years in order to make your money back we basically lost a lot of money by only using this fence and the shed for only four months I believe it was and as far as doing this again and getting ghosts wherever we move to next it's going to be another huge chunk of money to put up fencing and I don't know if we're going to be able to afford it for a very long time so that would be mistake number four so the fifth mistake that we made was in getting ducks and a goose and not having a pollen no we did our research and a lot of people say with khaki Campbell's they don't need a pond and with goose they really don't need a pond and several breeds of geese they really don't need a pond I can tell you after having them for several months that they really do need a pond it's it's almost essential for their being and even though we got them a small kiddie pool it just really wasn't enough we could just tell that they really we filled up that pool they sat in it and plated in all day soon as it got dirty they didn't want to play it anymore and let me tell you after a couple hours that thing stank and it needed empty every single day and refilled every single day they really really enjoyed it but it wasn't deep enough for them to dive there trying to clean their heads clean their faces and it just it just really wasn't enough so in my personal opinion after having ducks and a goose I would never get them again without having a pond number six which kind of falls right along with number five is keeping ducks and a goose together with chickens I would never do that again ducks and geese are very very messy and the ducks and geese will take food in their mouths and kind of backwash in the water they need that water to swallow their food so if you have a bunch of bowls out for chickens and for ducks and for your goose those bowls are going to get full of food and just get filthy within a few minutes and then you have your chickens that are eating and drinking that water and even if you put up poultry nipples like if you put up a bucket of poultry nipples the Ducks don't use it and the chickens are always going to go for fresh water on the ground rather than using a poultry nipple in the reason if the Ducks can't or won't use is because they need to clean their nostrils they have to dip their head into water so really having poultry nipples when you have chickens ducks and a goose are not going to work because chickens won't use them they're going to go for the bowl and the Ducks kneadable and then you have everyone just drinking dirty water all the time so and the other part of that is with the coop space when you keep the Ducks in the goose with the chickens the chickens poop on the ground and then the Ducks and the goose which can't fly up on a roost will actually sit in it and just get filthy and then if you have any kind of ramp like we do for our coop and ducks and geese because of their web speed very awkward it really hurts them to walk up any kind of ramp so it was always a challenge for these ducks and the goose to get up into the chicken coop they really need to be on a place on the ground and really have our own space number seven I'm going to have a lot of people that disagree with me on this one but this is my own personal opinion mobile coops sucks I hate mobile coops they're too small too constrained they're unsanitary for the birds even with tons of ventilation they just think they're crowded they're hot again even with extra ventilation there they're just really really hard to move even though you know we did kind of the our version of a chick show which is not the original version and I'm not knocking that design because we have our own design and we never did try the original design but just pulling it around the yard is virtually impossible at least in particular with art type of yard I think possibly on a slider area it would be a lot easier but because ours has a whole bunch of erosion in it and in a lot of rocks and tree stumps it's just really hard pulling it and even with with our original coupe design that we built which was a than my mobile coupe some of you guys may have seen where I bent the wheels oh hell vehicle link link to that video we've always had trouble just moving coops around I would never build or use another mobile coupe again unless they were on a tractor bed so that's just my opinion and my mistake that I would never do again number 9 was in trying to go to market on a small property in particular and this particular property in this particular area there are a lot of people that go to market with their products on one acre of land they do really well whether they're raising meat birds or they're raising eggs but on this particular property with the type of neighborhood that it is it was a bad idea we've kind of expanded into market with trying to get into selling rainbow eggs and it was just too big for this property and it was too noticeable goes back to being inconspicuous and we were not inconspicuous by having more birds in this property so my advice to anyone who's on urban homestead is keep it small and grow things or do things for yourself don't try and go to market with things until you lose for many years until you really get a good feel for your neighborhood and whether or not people are going to be ok with it because even if you have all your covenants is in line and your laws in line and you're allowed to have you know say chickens for example as many as you want on your property there's no limitations to it you could eventually take off some neighbors with the smell or just with the noise or who knows what and honestly it doesn't take much for a group of neighbors who are kicked off to get together and write up a petition and create some sort of law if they get you off your property and to get you to get your animals removed and that kind of leads me to my last one which is number nine which is being in the right community for doing what you want to do this particular community is not one that appreciates the homesteading lifestyle and if you are going to be homesteading my biggest mistake wasn't thinking that people were going to mind their own business and leave us to do our own thing while they did their own thing but when our nose is a note but when our noises started and coaching upon others right then that's where the line got crossed and people who are in the homesteading path are not going to really notice that or really care but people who do care about those things who do care about the value of their home and up keeping that and who do care about how nice their yard looks and what they're looking at when they look across their property at your place whether they see chickens if they don't like that that's where you can run into trouble so just keep in mind that if you are in a like-minded community you're going to be better off doing the homesteading things that you do so all this leads me back to getting rid of animals as I showed in the beginning we got rid of everything except for five hens and one rooster we were forced to get rid of our animals but we also don't want to cause any trouble for ourselves or for others and so the very first reasons and we decided to downsize and get rid of the animals is because for that reason we just don't really want to cause any trouble or have any trouble cause for us the second reason we got rid of our animals is because we are no longer going to stay here I don't know what we're going to do or how we're going to do it but we are moving we are no longer going to stay in an area that doesn't allow us to live the lifestyle that we want to live and I'm not quite sure how we're going to pull that off this whole last week we've been very busy staging our home for sale and also looking at other property we actually put in an offer on a property unfortunately that particular offer fell through it would have been awesome farm to work but we'll continue to look so when you have your house for sale when you are selling this is another thing to probably keep in mind if you are urban homesteading and that is is it in particularly urban homesteading on a property that is in an area that it doesn't have like-minded people then they're not going to appreciate the goats and the chickens when you're trying to sell your house it's going to be a deterrent from purchasing your home so in order to get the highest value for your home you need to make it needed you need to make it appeal to buyers and so that was the other reason that we got rid of our animals and then the third reason is for timing and infrastructure when you close on a house and move into another house there is a very quick turnover time there where you need to have infrastructure already set up in order to move your livestock over to that place have everything else set up if you don't have infrastructure set up such as the property we originally bid on you need to figure out a solution some home for your animals until you can get that set up and that can be very uncomfortable so I can also be a hindrance when you're trying to look for property and where your animals can possibly limit you as to what properties you can get because you have to worry about getting infrastructure set up or at least haven't already set up so because of the timing and the infrastructure that is the third reason that we got rid of all of our animals again all except for six because we feel that they are very small it's going to take them a little while until they get up to full size they're going to keep fairly quiet for a long time right now there are no rule thing that we can't have chickens it relates to four-legged animals so we don't think we're violation of that but we're going to keep it low and quiet by just having you six birds and hopefully we'll find a nice property here with the next couple months and that's our big news again I'm very humbled to make this video I can say that definitely not very happy about the situation that I put us in and these are the consequences for me doing what I did and I really hope that by putting this video out there that it really helps others that may be gone down this path so they're not caught in the same situation because I can tell you it's not easy to get rid of your animals at all so but when one door closes another door tends to open so instead of looking at this negatively we're trying to look at it as we have to take a few steps backs to pump as Jeremy likes to say so we are taking a few steps back with our livestock in order to go full force somewhere else where we will be able to hopefully flourish and do what we want to do on another property so please wish it the best of luck in finding something because we're going to need it and I hope it's been helpful to you guys if you guys have any tips or tricks for homesteading on an urban lot if you guys have any mistakes you've made please leave those down below I'm hoping that people will come here and read all these comments and learn from these mistakes and if you guys like this kind of stuff like subscribe and we'll see you in the next video thanks for watching

Channel: Guildbrook Farm

Views: 644,925

Rating: 4.8890333 out of 5

Keywords: guildbrook farm, homestead, homesteading, farm, farming, livestock, homestead channel, urban homestead, mini farm, backyard homestead, backyard farm, modern homestead, goats, chickens, ducks, geese, mistakes, homestead living, self sufficient living, backyard farming, homestead mistakes, homesteading mistakes, backyard chickens, 1 acre homestead, self sufficient, land for homesteading, self sufficient farming, simple living, self reliant, homestead land

Id: _pyModyV4Cg

Length: 21min 42sec (1302 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 23 2017