Hi from Wellsford!

Hi there, My husband and i have 3.5 acres in Wellsford, We are getting our 1st 'farm' animals tomorrow (all new for us), 3 brown shaver 10 week old chickens. We have the chicken coop ready for them, but are they ok to go outside at 10 weeks old or should we have the coop in the garage?
Hope to get a couple cows soon for the freezer so will no doubt be on here asking lots of questions!

Welcome to the forum. If your chicks are fully feathered (it's a while since I had young ones, so can't remember when that happens) and your hutch is pretty draught-tight, I'd have thought they'd be fine.

Cattle: far more my area of daily experience!
First thing: Cows are adult female cattle, generally after they've calved. Bulls are ... bulls. Steers used to be bulls (bull can apply to any age) before their testes were removed. Heifers are young female cattle (and you'll see some differences in the use of that term depending on area, farming practice, etc., but for your purposes, heifers are just young females.) Calves are calves. Weaner is a word applied to different sorts of cattle at different times. Dairy-cross calves are weaners at about three months, around 100kg, usually available spring-early summer. Beef weaners are six to nine months old and weigh up to three or more times that, usually available in Autumn. In my opinion the latter are the ones to keep for beef, but you pay up front for the difference in quality and size. If you do the maths, I reckon you'll always find you come out better off going with the beef calf (it's older, healthier at the start and yields more and better beef when finished).

If someone tries to sell you a Rig, run away from them and keep going (a rig is a badly castrated steer, which will continue to behave like a bull and might or might not be fertile).

Whatever sort of cattle you end up with, don't let someone sell you anything which still has testicles.

Read as much as you can. Anything, even if it looks irrelevant to start with, will round out your general rural knowledge!

Whatever sort of cattle you end up with, don't let someone sell you anything which still has testicles.

.. good call Ruth, applies to more that cattle .. and its the golden rule at my place.. no testicles allowed!.. OH very nervous man[]
seriously, with only 3.5acres, is that in grazing or does that include the house and lawn.. thats not alot of land for cattle...do you have aneighbour who you could graze an animal with when feed gets short in winter?

Naturally if you're going to breed something ...

But if you're not deliberately getting into breeding, testosterone is something you really don't want to have to deal with!