Farm Requirements

[Iktomi]

OK, so we live on a small hobby farm. Our out-buildings are run down and we are planning on replacing them in the future (and hundreds of thousands of dollars later). We are also planning on adopting from foster care in the future. However, we have concerns. In the homestudy, all buildings on our property are required to be "in good repair." Well, I've never seen a barn or farm building that didn't need some work done on it. Are they expecting farm buildings to be house-quality? Is there some quality standard that we will have to meet with our farm buildings? Our house is pretty much a normal house, but I don't know what the standards will be for our farm buildings.

Also, will all our farm animals need to be vaccinated? I know our dog and house cats will have to be vaccinated, but what about our goats? Horses? (I think horses would have to be vaccinated as they are pets, not livestock?) What about barn cats? Chickens? (How do you even vaccinate a chicken?) We certainly don't have money enough to vaccinated our whole herd (50+ animals). Not to mention we have 2 snakes in the house plus a tarantula. What are the standards with non-mammal animals?

[lotsakids]

We live on a farm as well and I had some of the same concerns. My husband and I actually talked about it and that was one of our biggest issues were our animals because our animals are our life, not just because we care about them but we depend on some of them for meat/milk/eggs etc. All that our worker required was record of what vaccinations were given to the dogs/cats on the place and if we had current dog license. I expected something more thorough but they were not. Don't be so worried. By the way, may I ask what state your in?

[Iktomi]

Thanks! I live in Wisconsin. It'll be a couple years before we are able to foster, but a lot needs to be done in that time. It's my dream, so I really hope we'll be able to do it! May I ask what condition your barn, etc... was in? Did they look at your buildings and sheds or fences?

[lotsakids]

Well we have two barns, a garage, another barn that is half garage and half barn, a cellar, cellar house, silo, a couple sheds and two chicken houses. Most of our structures are in decent shape. The older ones we keep painted but nothing is really new. The worker that came out only stood in the yard and looked around, she never went to or through our outbuildings. I told her the children would have no business by themselves in our outbuildings. But, we have a really good worker so ??

[heidindg]

It is to my knowledge all dogs and cats (maybe others) have to be vaccinated including barn cats. It is to protect the child if they go outside because you have no way of monitoring the cats 24/7 to know if they get rabies.