something about farm management

[greybeard]

Well, my goal is to have a scale that might show someone who owns a small farm where they might work to improve themselves, farm-wise. It is not to compare one farm to another farm in some type of contest. It has nothing to do with profit at all, so someone could not use it to work toward better sales or cutting expenses. It definitely has some amount of subjective, circumstance related judgement involved and that wouldn't make it less useful. Mostly, I am thinking about my own Nigerian dwarf goats, but it could work for rabbits and alpacas (maybe with some minor changes?), if you wanted to do so. Sure "enough" is not a hard and fast rule - as opposed to "x square feet amount per animal" and that would be why it says "enough." Here's an example of an area where I could improve- "organization." Whenever I need something, I first have to find it, so having a place and a label and maybe an inventory would help my farm in terms of organization. I have seen some wonderfully organized farms that I would give a high mark to and some that have no rhyme or reason. I have also seen farms that look very well arranged except that the whole area of security is being overlooked and losses to predators will take a toll. Mostly, though, I am just speculating on what elements make a small farm a better farm.
@Baymule, what things do you check on a list?

My place is finished it's not my first farm, and I've been doing this a long time.
I read a lot of threads and posts here, and one of the most prevalent comments goes something like this: We need to build _____ and buy ____ but that will all have to wait until we can afford it."

It's an almost daily statement here at BYH.
Never minimize the asset that is expense cutting.
And, financially is not the only avenue there is to profit in farming. If money was all that was involved, I wouldn't be doing it, and would have never got interested in it back in 1965.

Even then tho, I really can't see how I could have used a check list, especially with no standard against which to determine my efforts were lacking.

 

[Baymule]

"Ranking" Sounds like a score card to me. In that case, lower my score because I have 4 plastic feed bags leaned up against the portable building that are full of glass shards and old rusty cans and metal. They came out of the half acre the pigs are on, since February 20, 2016. In a few short months, they have unearthed very old burn piles from probably the 1960's and exposed all manner of undecomposed trash. I went "glass walking" this morning and picked up a double handful of glass shards. Hmmm.....maybe since I am removing all that glass and sharp rusty old cans my score should go up?

@greybeard is right about the financial part. We are looking at this place as our forever-rest-of-our-life-home. We want things done right, not slap-dash and we want to make the fruit of our labors last us a long time.

 

[Southern by choice]

Aesthetics in general have nothing to do with the health of the animals. May be pleasing to the eye and look great, tidy, and neat but the real issue is health.
A small farm of 4-10 goats requires far less time and effort than a small farm of 50+ goats.
Flies are an issue especially for those of us that have streams throughout the property... there is only so much one can do
@Baymule we have the same issue- under that earth is lots of glass from the many generations that buried it. UGH
When I have over 200 individual hooves to trim that takes a lot of time... a dump run is irrelevant.

Actually, all joking aside... for a family farm where children and spouses are involved I think a checklist is a GREAT idea!
It allows everyone to be on the same page as to how things are done as well as coming up with ideas of what changes may need to take place. Especially where small farms begin to grow, lots of management changes take place as numbers go up or additional species are added.

 

[OneFineAcre]

Bayleaf Meadows didn't say that aesthetics had anything to do with the health of animals.

Aesthetics are important, humans place a great deal of emphasis on aesthetics in nearly every aspect of our existence. That' why we plant tulips sometimes instead of green beans.

Aesthetics is one of the things about my place I find most frustrating, I can never get ahead on keeping things organized and clean. I've got a pile of trash that the goats uncovered that I'm still burning.

I know I observe how other peoples places look. How a place looks would influence if I purchased an animal from someone

And, I use check lists all of the time. I have a check list for everyone of my animals. When they were born, when they freshened, when they were vaccinated, when they were wormed.

Check lists are even more valuable the more animals you have.

 

[Southern by choice]

Agreed, not arguing ...

Actually, all joking aside... for a family farm where children and spouses are involved I think a checklist is a GREAT idea!

I use to be a checklist junky...

 

[greybeard]

Aesthetics are important, humans place a great deal of emphasis on aesthetics in nearly every aspect of our existence.

..important "to" humans and many do indeed place a great deal of emphasis on them....etc etc.
The animals and forage and the feed in the bin don't care.

I know the current world is all about an orderly, highly regimented society, where everything is laid out in black and white but imo, it stifles innovation, invention and decreases self dependence. The other 1/2 of that is, history has shown us there is far more to be learned from failure than success.
I'm not much on that 'by the book' by the calendar, 'my way or the highway' kind of thing. When I have young people (4H/FFA) over here at my place to learn about forage or working cattle, the thing I want them to do more than anything else is think and when explaining what we will be doing, I rarely explain 'how' were going to do it, or 'when' each part will be done, and do so only after asking them how they would do it or how they think it should be done. Many of them have some pretty good answers too, and more than once, I've adopted one of their ideas, but sometimes, if I think it's safe to do so, I'll let them try it their way even if I know from the git go it won't work. They may or may not remember the successful way we ended up doing it in the end, but they will always remember what did not work.