Modern agriculture can make people forget how different livestock fit together on the homestead 🐷🐄🐐

High performance animals like used on professional dairies such as Holsteins or Yorkshire pigs on hog farms can make people forget why different stock is raised for different purposes. Professional farms feed a lot of grain and grass in controlled rations so it’s easy to forget animals unique strengths.

Goats are browsers, they are best for cleaning up areas of brush and woody areas. Their thing is brush not pasture, they aren’t miniature cows.

Cows on the other hand are grass eaters. They turn land that isn’t good for crops into valuable forage that cows can uniquely break down grass and turn it into milk and meat. Grass grows a lot of places where other crops won’t.

Pigs are organic recyclers. Dairy farms had them traditionally to drink waste milk not fit for human consumption. Homesteaders gave them food scraps and spoiled bread.