Just arrived in Lower Moutere

Hi everyone,

My husband and I have just moved down from Palmerston North. We have moved to help my parents with their 8 acre lifestyle property. Currently they only have a few chooks, a horse and a sheep (that thinks it is a person and tries to get inside).

We are planning on fixing the place up with the possibility of getting a couple of dairy goats for our own use as we don't drink cows milk, bee hives and a pig.
We were also looking at raising calves to earn a little money.
Any other suggestions or advice would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers

Welcome to the forum.

Don't count on making money out of rearing a few calves. For example, if you've only a few and if you have no experience, buy too expensive and then lose one or two, the whole thing will cost you in money, time and heartbreak. If you do go down that track make sure you do a fair amount of research on how to do it well, before you start.

Calves are rather large babies and while they're robust when healthy, if they get sick, they can go down fast and they're quite hard to nurse back to health. If you don't have everything right for them, they can get sick quite easily.

Good luck with it all.