Livestock Options for Absentee Landowner

[perdurabo]

Just last year I purchased 23 acres of unimproved rural land in southern Caldwell County Texas (just southeast of Austin). I am now in the process of getting a well dug on the property in order to water livestock and will eventually be building my homestead there in a year or two (dependent on whether I can sell my current home in Austin for enough to finance the construction of the house out there). The place currently has no agricultural tax exemption and I want to be able to start raising SOME sort of critter out there to qualify for an agricultural exemption.

Since we have no income tax in Texas, property taxes are quite high. I pay nearly $1100 in yearly taxes for the 23 acres with no improvements at all apart from an electric power pole for the new well. If I get an ag exemption, those yearly taxes would drop to as low as $25/year. Unfortunately, its a 5-year process to get an ag exemption and you have to prove that your land has been under agricultural use for 5 years before you can apply for an exemption. There is such a thing as a "wildlife exemption" that offers a similar tax break that seeks to maintain wildlife on the property, but for some insane reason, its necessary to have an ag exemption BEFORE you can get a wildlife exemption! So I need to get started putting the property to agricultural use. The main problem is I only get out there about 2-3 times per month and would not be able to look after high maintenance animals that might require daily feeding of some kind.

As I said, Im going to have a well finished soon that can provide water to a metal tank with a float switch. Theres also a stock pond on the property but its quite small and can dry up in the long hot summers. The property is mostly post oaks and mesquite with a few cleared areas. The fences are in pretty decent shape but they are mostly just 4 or 5 strand barbed wire on cedar posts. I need to find some kind of critter I can put out there that satisfies the minimum requirements for agricultural use in Caldwell county. According to the appraisal district, the minimums are: "4 cows that produce 3 calves a year, or 8 stocker calves, or 4 breeding mares producing 2 foals a year, or 20 nanny goats producing 20 kids a year, or 20 ewes producing 20 lambs a year, or reaping 1.5 tons of hay per year."

From what I understand cows require a lot of maintenance and require pasture that is actually sown with pasture grass seed. The plus is that most cattle don't require anything more than a standard 5-strand barbed wire fence. From what Ive been told by some goats, especially spanish meat goats, can survive without any fancy supplement on brush and scrub indefinitely, but they require very expensive goat fencing to be installed over the top of the barbed wire so they don't escape. My land is host to a lot of feral hogs which I enjoy hunting. If I install goat fencing the hogs will either destroy my goat fence or the goat fence will keep them out, making my hog hunting go away as well. Theres the issue of predators too. Large cattle need not fear feral dogs or coyotes, but goats and sheep apparently do and I am dubious that something like a guard donkey or two can actually prevent significant losses from predators. Guard dogs work, I hear, but my land is too small to keep an unattended guard dog on the property that might wander off-property and harm neighbors livestock, etc.

I have hear that one can lease out their property to someone else willing to run cattle on the place and willing to look after the animals, but I am wary of letting some stranger have the run of my property and since I enjoy hunting, target shooting, and ATVing on my property I dont think someone would want their cattle to be exposed to all that noise and potential danger, especially with it being only 23 acres. The final option I suppose would be sowing some hay out there but I currently dont own a tractor and I dont know how much hay one can expect to harvest from what little I have cleared in open areas. I don't want to cut down and clear any of the lovely oaks on my place just to make pasture land for hay production, nor do I want to pay someone with a dozer thousands of dollars just to clear it all out for hay production. What is the minimum number of cleared acres one would need to reasonably expect to harvest 1.5 tons of hay per year from? If I only have about 2-3 acres cleared as open pasture, is it realistic to find someone willing to lease it out for hay production?

What would you all recommend?

Thanks in advance

[yarro]

On 23 acres unless you have really good pasture and a secondary well, visiting two or three times a month without lots of graze and backup water source is not enough visitation to really raise any domestic stock without risk of you having them all die, except maybe goats if you had the right fence and enough graze, but that would keep the hogs out too. They also tend to be escape artists. Plus they don't taste as good as beef, but are better than camel, pronghorn, and Javilina.

Sheep are actually harder to raise than cattle as it is not as easy to tell when their health is not good. They tend to stick with the flock until they fall over dead. They also seem to get diseases more readily. Still don't taste as good as beef unless spiced and cooked on skewers over fire like in Northwest China.

Horses eat too much and need too much attention and their medical bills will run you more than your current taxes. If you horses aren't in tip top shape people tend to report you to the authorities. A friend's wife rescues neglected horses and it took awhile for the local sheriff to leave them alone. Before that they had people call in there dead horse that was really sleeping on it's side. Their pasture is 10 minutes from their house so it looks unattended. They can also live 30 years. From personal experience, I think that they taste better than a cow, but not as good as donkey. ( I chose my meals in China based on what animals I haven't eaten yet.)

You did not say what they wanted for proof in each case, but I assume that if you are getting 8 calves they want to see a bill of sales showing you purchasing them every year and a bill of sale for the ones that you sold and/or written records showing disposition (ie for ones that died). If you get equipment or build barns or sheds to run your farm then you can depreciate all of it on your taxes plus you can loose money every year unlike other businesses where you need to make money a certain number of years in a time period.

If you were living there then it would be easy as I would fence in two small (3/4 to 1 acre each) pastures and rotate 8 calves (purchased early in the spring) between them and slaughter them in the late fall. It would require suplemental feeding with hay (and grain just before slaughter), but it would leave 21 acres for play and occasional grazing (just go out to feed them and they will go back in the pasture). A friend of mine with an acre does this here in AZ with 6 cows and has no problem finding 5 other folks who would like a whole cow, which leaves one for his family. He now gets the same 5 people every year and they all have friends who would buy if he had more. He hauls them to the slaughter house for the new owners and they pay for butchering. Says he makes 300-450 a head depending on the year and he doesn't try to cut feed costs as it is a hobby. You could also just sell them to a slaughter house and be done with it, but you would make a little less. You really need a tractor to get good pastures in plus they come in handy from time to time as well. You would also need access to a stock trailer for hauling calves and cows.

-Yarro

[kurbelgehause]

From what Ive been told by some goats



Eh, maybe we've been spending too much time with the livestock!:D