The Famine by Liam O'Flaherty (1979) is a story of a west Irish family during the great famine. At the start of the famine the Kilmartins lived on a "little plot of land" where they raised their potatoes and had a cow and calf, a mare, sheep, pigs and chickens.

In general people kept pigs, chickens, geese, maybe a goat or some sheep, and a donkey.

Collection of Maggie Land Blanck

This prosperous farm family in Kerry keeps cows, donkeys and geese.

Pigs were kept not to be eaten by the family but to help pay the rent. Pigs were fed the potato peelings, the whey of the milk, and other refuse. Their dung was used for fertilizer. When nice and fat they were taken to market and sold. A better off farmer may have kept a pig for his own consumption.

Not everyone kept sheep. The Byrnes might have had them. Records indicate that there was sheep grazing in the area around Mohorra.

Undated

March 2005

In October 1854 Laurence Waldton of Ballybrack gave notice that his tenants could not keep goats on their property because of "the mischief to timber, fences, and crops by those animals".

Cows, like sheep, were not kept by everyone. Better off farmers might have had one or two or a cow and a calf. Butter was both consumed and sold. However, it was mainly sold to help pay the rent. A byproduct of making butter, the buttermilk, was added to potatoes or drank straight. Traditional buttermilk is the liquid left over when butter is made. It is not the stuff one buys in an American supermarket today (which is cultured buttermilk). Traditional buttermilk is thin and slightly sour.

Come day, go day
Wish in me heart it were Sunday
Drinking buttermilk through the week
Whiskey on a Sunday

Whiskey On A Sunday By the IRISH ROVERS

A horse was a luxury item. Only the better off families would have had one.

Horses for the common Irishman were mainly used as beasts of burden as this 1868 illustration shows. Horse racing was popular among the landlord class. Captain Boycott was an avid horse racer.

A mule is a sterile cross between a horse and a donkey.

Donkeys were the most common beast of burden for the Irish peasant.

Chickens, geese and other fowl were kept for their eggs which were both sold and consumed. The fowl were also sold at market.

Dogs were kept for hunting and companionship.