Pig Talk for Teresa

Teresa asked me the other day for my advice on pigs and I thought some of the rest of you might be interested as well.

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"Terri, do you have any great advice to give me about picking out piglets. Also feeding, housing, husbandry? "

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We have raised pigs for meat for 7 years or so and have found that they are one of the easiest animals to care for~ both health wise and work wise. We have not yet ventured into breeding and the care of sows as we don't have the facilities set up for farrowing and it is just easier for us to buy a few pigs in the spring to raise rather than keeping a boar and sow all year long. Depending on how big our family was at the time, or how many orders we had, we have raised from 4-6 pigs a summer. Our farm theory is that (hopefully) the animals will pay for themselves plus give us food, and the pigs usually exceed that for us plus help balance the farm checkbook for those other non-providing critters (ummm, those 7 horses).

Rob works at a Cheese Factory where he has access to scrap cheese and whey that is otherwise thrown away. Several years ago he decided to try raising a batch of pigs on the extra cheese and whey to see how they would do. It turns out that they grew amazingly fast and the pork was delicious. We buy very little pig feed, but do supplement with corn if needed and lots of left over table scraps and garden veggie scraps in the summer time. Pigs also like to eat grass or hay and can be pastured to double as field workers. If your fences were capable of it you could pasture them in an area one year to let them till up the ground, then the next year plant, and vice-versa trading pastures every year. Free compost and free tilling. It is a concept we have been pondering but have not yet done.

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We have our pig pen set up with an automatic water spicket nipple that the pigs learn to bite on to get water out of, rather than a water bucket as they do like to play in the water and you end up with a muddy water tub and a big mud puddle to contend with. Eventually (hopefully next summer??) we would like to pour a cement pad under the water spicket as well as under the feeding area to prevent extra mud. The feeding trough is a plastic barrel cut in half the long way, screwed to a board, then attached to the fence so the pigs can't drag it around.

Our fence is made of hog panels and T-posts. Between the pigs pushing from their side, and the cows and horses pushing from the other side, we have decided to reinforce the fence with wooden posts and wood rails as well. The hog panel will stay on the inside of the posts. Electric fencing is another option. Their pen is also situated next to a central loading pen so that when it is time to load them up to send them to the butcher it is not too much of an ordeal.

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We have a very simple run in shed built out of salvaged lumber for them to use. Before their little house was built they were known to sleep in an old freezer turned sideways~ a bit ironic, I know. We have discovered that it takes quite a bit of effort to raise pigs in our cold WI winters. They use up all of their energy in the winter maintaining their weight rather than getting big and fat so we only keep them in the summer months. One year of pigs in the barn over the winter was enough to convince us that it just was not worth it.

We have been buying our piglets from a large pig farm for the past 2 years weighing 50-60 pounds. This certain farm does not like to sell their piglets any smaller, altho we have bought 25-30 pounders from other farms that have done just fine. We like to purchase pigs that have already been castrated (barrows), altho this year we did have to get some gilts (females) as that was what was available. I understand that there is a bit of a movement to not castrate the boars, but I have also heard horror stories of how bad the meat smells. One year we were convinced by a young child to buy the cute little runt and learned the hard way that runts always stay runts. Barrows will grow faster and bigger than the gilts if you are looking for a butchering animal. Check out the environment that you are buying your pigs from~ it should be clean and well maintained. The farm reflects the animals that are raised there. Piglets should have their eye teeth cut, iron shots given, and some will have their tails clipped (a personal preference) to prevent them from biting on each other.

The pigs are raised to a goal live weight of 250-300#, which is usually within 4 months, and then are sent off to the local butcher shop. We keep 1-2 pigs for our family a year and have regular repeat customers who buy the others. The butcher shop takes care of the custom orders and the customer picks up their meat directly from them. The meat always gets rave reviews being raised this way and it is nice to know where it comes from~ homegrown and fresh.