Growing the Farm
Five years from a 2.17 acre base to a mature livestock farm, taken one step at a time, each step paid for in feed before it is paid for in animals.
The essential housing, water, handling and feed systems, built and in use. Manageable numbers, while the farm learns its animals, its ground and its market.
Keep the best females, improve the breeding stock, grow more feed, and start conserving hay and silage in quantities that matter.
Additional fodder land begins supporting stronger herd growth. Finishing becomes regular and breeding numbers rise.
Larger breeding groups, larger finishing batches, more stored feed, and stronger farm gate markets, built on what the first three years proved.
A substantial Galla, Dorper and cattle operation, supported by owned land, leased fodder land and external grazing.
More feed first. More animals afterwards.
These are long term scale ambitions, not current numbers. Whether the farm reaches them depends on feed, land, water, staffing and performance, in that order.
Ambition, not stock · Reached only if the feed is there first
No new animals until there is feed standing and stored for them.
Owned for the base, bought for fodder, leased as the herd grows into it.
Enough for the dry season at the herd size planned, not the one on hand.
Good herders and stockmen, trained and kept. Animals are only as well kept as the people keeping them.
Fertility, growth and survival, measured honestly. Grow what the numbers support.
The journal records each step as it is taken: what went up, what came home, and what we got wrong. This page is updated as each year is lived rather than planned.