Pets are out of the question in our particular self-sustainability scenario with one singular exception (see later). Dogs and cats are carnivores and would add a significant burden on the need to produce animal protein. A working barn cat would be useful by keeping down the voles and mice, etc., a bit, so that option might be worth the hassle of having to increase the rabbit production a little, but on a small plot like this, the cat would spend most of its time somewhere else anyway (speaking from experience). So IMO not worth it.
But I do count on having five egg-laying hens in our scenario, producing about 1000 eggs a year. And those could also be pets. A friend of mine has bought retired egg-laying hens, with the intention of having them lay eggs for a year and then killing them for meat. His wife took to observing them after work (first mistake), started to recognize their individual traits (second mistake), and gave them names (third mistake). At that point, she became opposed to the idea of killing and eating them, so they were allowed to live until natural death. And AFAIK, they continue to do this still, about ten years later. The hens still provide them with eggs, and they live comfortable and happy lives until death. They are not cuddly like cats or dogs, but they can get affectionate and entertaining.
From spring to fall, five hens should be able to find enough food in the coppice, with occasional supplementation with kitchen scraps. Hens can and will eat virtually anything, although they prefer insects and small animals. In the winter, they would require feeding, but it should be possible to grow enough surplus to keep them alive through winter with a combination of food scraps, cracked grain, and boiled potatoes/potato peels (there will inevitably be some potatoes that are not fit for human consumption due to pest damage) mixed with shredded and boiled alfalfa hay. It is also not unreasonable to expect more walnuts than one person can comfortably eat, and hens will love those in winter.
Rabbits or guinea pigs would not be pets in this scenario; they would be meat. Their whole purpose would be to eat plant parts inedible to humans and convert them into something edible. They can be omitted entirely in favor of pet hens, but the plot will thus inevitably lose some efficiency by using all excess plant material (and there would be plenty) just for composting.
Like the hens, the rabbits should be able to graze in the coppice throughout the summer with the chickens, since they eat different stuff. The water cleaning facility, the fallow field, the coppice, and the orchard should provide enough plant material to make hay for winter to keep one buck and two does alive through winter. In the spring and summer, there should be enough surplus plant matter to get at least 10 kg of meat out of their offspring.
With rabbits, there would be a need for outward input – vaccination. Without it, a deadly outbreak of myxomatosis is inevitable at some point, again, speaking from experience.
10 kg of meat and 1000 eggs would provide about 90 Mcal, getting the total to 954 Mcal, enough to keep an active person alive.
Pests are another problem. The hens would help a bit with pest control by devouring any insects that travel through the coppice. But mice, rats, and voles would be a problem. Hens will kill a vole or mice if they catch them, but they are not particularly good at catching them. In my opinion, the best self-sustainable way to keep these pests under control would be to strategically put bucket traps baited with walnuts. And subsequently killing all captured rodents and feeding them to the hens.
What slugs and bugs get onto the veggies anyway can be in part destroyed manually, and in part by homemade insecticides. For that purpose, growing a few potted chrysanthemums would be necessary to make an insecticide spray if needed. Daisies growing anywhere in the garden should be cherished, because they can serve in this capacity, too.
To someone uncomfortable with killing animals of any kind and in any context and for whatever purpose, I do not recommend attempting food self-sustainability. Whatever spiritual connection one feels to fellow living creatures, that connection is inevitably strained beyond breaking point when said creatures literally threaten one’s survival by destroying their only food source. It is easy to be high-minded about this when the food comes from the supermarket. It is less easy when it comes from hard work and a yearly gamble with nature.
this continues to be interesting stuff indeed. don’t have much to say except i’m here for it all.
As above, I can’t add anything, but it’s interesting to see the process of thinking it all through.
In the “pests” category, do you have bigger more destructive ones where you are? I ask because one of my kids has been trying in a much less thorough way to gain a bit of self-sufficiency, but is hampered, here in Vermont, by deer, and especially by small carnivorous critters like foxes and raccoons, which curtailed his attempt to raise chickens, and are making fruit growing a challenge as well.
@Matthew Currie, to be honest, I completely forgot predatory pests. I did not forget the deer -- in the beginning, I mentioned that the plot needs to be fenced off with a hog-proof fence. But foxes, martens, and rats could be a problem; even squirrels can steal eggs. And raccoons in North America.
We never had a big problem with carnivores when we had rabbits and hens, although we had an occasional one. And two years ago I spotted a fox carrying a dead hen outside my garden, and one dead hen was left in my neighbor’s garden too. Foxes occasionally make havoc in my garden by trying to dig out the voles.
Hens and rabbits need to be closed in a well-built enclosure overnight to prevent predator incidents.
And hens should have an outdoor bird-proof enclosure in the winter, to avoid contact with wild birds and thus bird flu.
My son is currently working on an electric fence for his small pear orchard. Raccoons are his main enemy here, as they seem to be voracious pear lovers. But for them the fence does not to be too so high, we hope. For his birthday I got him some supplies including a nifty (at least I hope it’s nifty) solar charger.
Back many years ago I had a big vegetable garden and found that it took about 8 feet of fencing to stop a leaping deer. I put barbed wire up on extension poles and at night would occasionally hear a loud “sproing-crash-crash” outside, as a deer leapt without seeing the wire, and was vaulted back into the woods. I did also learn that a woodchuck can eat a 15 foot row of broccoli in a surprisingly short time -- like turn away, go get a cup of coffee,and “where’s the broccoli?”
@Matthew Currie, we only have roe deer around here, and whilst they can theoretically jump over my fence, they never did. All my neighbors have lower fences than I do, and I used to have a lower fence before I renovated it a few years ago. Yet I know of no instance of deer jumping into gardens.
I am surrounded by meadows, so whilst I occasionally spot deer wandering outside the garden, they probably never feel the need to jump the fences when there is enough easily accessible food without that exertion.
Woodchucks must be a menace. I merely contest with water voles, who are much smaller.
My mother’s house was well within an urban setting but within a few hundred metres of a river valley.
She gave up on growing flowers and any vegetable gardening because the deer ate everything.
EVERYTHING
Tulips, nasturtiums, onions, geraniums, you name it.
I think they may have eaten water voles, given the chance.
One of the most discouraging gardening events was seeing deer eating the tomato vines. The mice and rats and hornworms had pretty much taken care of the tomatoes themselves, leaving only the plants that are supposedly toxic, but not toxic enough to stop a cervine gourmet.
About the only up side of our last year of gardening was that at the end there were a couple of stunted pumpkins and spaghetti squash, enough that we actually got a spaghetti squash big enough to eat -- and of course a few enormous zucchinis, because not even the marauding fauna can eat all the zukes. The pumpkins were nothing but for halloween the kids made zuke-o-lanterns. In the compost heap where all the residue ended up, a volunteer plant grew the following year, and produced a hybrid that looked like a pumpkin outside and a spaghetti squash inside. A spagumpkin! Unfortunately its seeds did not take.
@Matthew Currie, it looks like you got there a possibly promising F1 pumpkin hybrid.
If legality were not an issue, one way to deal with deer in our self-sustainability scenario would be to wait for them in the garden with a gun, concealed in a spot with a good view. Two birds, one shot -- crops saved, meat acquired.
Edit: now that I think about it, maybe one reason for why deer never jumped over our fence is that there are always bushes close to it, either on the outside or on the inside. That is also common for most of my neigbors. The deer does not have a clean space to land in and/or a flat hard surface to jump from.
Charly you are right with animals not jumping over a fence if there is no suitable clear space to land in, and the other thing about bushes is that unless you have trimmed them, so that they have an obvious edge, bushes wave around and make it difficult for the animal to work out whether there is enough clear space for a landing. As for wire fencing a lot of animals have trouble seeing it as their vision is often quite different from ours, which in itself makes them wary and if they do try a bad experience will put them right off. Our first German shepherd jumped into our neighbours garden to say hello when she was about six months old, but despite there being places she could easily have jumped over or gone under either the wall or the trained apple wires she never tried again, and I think it’s because their garden was a couple of foot lower than ours which gave her a shock. We were lucky our neighbour loved her as she grabbed hold of Jazz who wouldn’t have been able to get back into our garden, but could have got out of the neighbours either onto the allotments or straight on to the road.