Are questions about animals in garden maintenance or animal husbandry on topic?

Question

Animals are part of nature, sometimes welcome in our gardens, sometimes not. Hence questions involving animals have always been part of our site, as far as they touch our everyday gardening actions.

So far, we have always looked for questions with the main focus on gardening, whether it was about welcoming and supporting animals to attract and protect them:

Bird-friendly gardens, identifying poisonous plants, attracting pollinators or beneficial insects....

Or about deterring them or protecting our plants from harm:

Keeping wild or domestic animals out or away from out gardens, protecting our plants from insects or slugs etc.

Lately, there have been a few questions about using small animals in sustainable gardening:

https://gardening.stackexchange.com/questions/26917/what-breed-of-chickens-would-make-the-best-lawn-mowers-for-a-food-forest-prepera

https://gardening.stackexchange.com/questions/26944/what-type-of-guinea-pigs-will-keep-a-food-forset-well-cleaned

https://gardening.stackexchange.com/questions/26945/how-do-i-raise-guinea-pigs-effectively-for-meat

They ask about suitable breeds and other aspects of animal husbandry besides assuming the animals to fulfil a certain gardening tasks like, in this case, keeping grass short while staying away from certain plants. Do we see these as on topic on a site that focuses on gardening?

Answer 1

No, these are not gardening questions. These are questions about permaculture or Sustainability.
We have an associated site, Sustainable living, where they already have similar questions such as

• How do I set myself up not to mow the lawn
• Should I raise my own animals or support a local farm
• numerous questions about permaculture

The Sustainable living site would be a better fit for questions about using animals in gardens as long as they fit these criteria

• Specific issues with sustainable living
• Real problems or questions that you’ve encountered

Of course questions that show some prior research and are not opinion based will be a better fit anywhere on SE.

Answer 2

As a moderator of Sustainability SE I think that the 3 questions mentioned by the OP would fit nicely there. The moderators here can migrate the questions as far as I am concerned.

For future reference, there are several StackExchange sites that take questions on animals. Where a question fits best depends on the rationale behind the question.

• Sustainability SE: questions on keeping animals in order to live more sustainably and less dependent on external resources (animal husbandry)
• Pets SE: questions on how to keep domesticated animals for fun
• Biology SE: questions about biological concepts and biological mechanisms behind medical conditions of animals.
• Gardening SE: questions that focus on the gardening/landscaping aspects of attracting or repelling animals.