20, 276 (plus 4)

That is how many creatures we are responsible for here at Terrabyte Farm.  Jackson and I enjoyed a rare day on sun the other day and went around and counted up how many of the various animals we have, here is what we came up with:

• 4 people (two adults, two children)
• 1 dog
• 2 cats
• 5 cows (two cows, two bull calfs, one steer *F)
• 3 sheep (two hoggets (the name for a ewe who has not yet lambed and) one wether*F)
• 2 goats (one nanny and one wether)
• 2 pigs*F
• 20 rabbits (two female and one male adult breeding trio and their 17 offspring*F)
• 7 turkeys (two female and one male adult breeding trio and four poults*F)
• 9 geese (four for breeding stock and 5*F)
• 37 ducks (14 to keep as breeding stock, 10*F, and 13 we hope to sell)
• 94 chickens (34 to keep as breeding stock, 40*F and 20 more to sell)
• 20,000 bees (plus or minus a few thousand)

(*F after an animal means it is destined for the freezer by 11/1/09)

That gives us a grand total of 20,276 creatures and four humans.

By the time we have finished butchering and selling this fall, we will carry 69 animals over the winter (down from 276) and the two hives of bees, each at around 10,000 bees.  We also plan to breed our two sheep and two cows again for lambs and calved in spring 2010.

Next year, we hope to have a “closed” farm meaning that we will not bring in any outside animals and regenerate our animals from the breeding stock we have acquired this year.  One exception will be pigs, although we have been seriously talking about getting a sow to breed, there is a very reputable pig farmer down the street from us that we could breed our sow back to, so we wouldn’t also have to keep a boar.  The other exception will depend on how the butchering of our set of rabbits goes.  If it seems like something we want to repeat, we will get another trio to be able to keep some genetic variability in the offspring and be able to breed for more than this generation.