On the post “Keeping a Pig for Meat” Bill asked: Some questions: I understand you have plenty of land for pasturing, so smell in minimized and the rooting and damage is not spread beyond the land’s capacity to continuously rejuvenate. As long as the pigs are happy and healthy, you have a number of options that will all work well.if(typeof __ez_fad_position != 'undefined'){__ez_fad_position('div-gpt-ad-familyfarmlivestock_com-medrectangle-3-0')}; Generally, pigs require minimal space. I am wondering if you perhaps have larger piglets that should be weaned doing the damage. I will generally say sure! I like to throw in the occasional special snacks, like hay or a cow pie, in this area to keep the pigs happy. there was 3 ton of chicken litter per acres put on the hay meadow last year. thanks again. Pigs need the breeze in the summer and the fresh air in the winter. Many people use a mixture of straw and wood chips or sawdust as needed. How to deal with this? How? They like sun. They tend to graze the tops in the warm months and the tubers in the colder times. The same holds true for emails you might send with questions or comments. New pig keepers often wonder about the right number of pigs per acre. Protect the apple and chestnut with a fence around them. Topologically this could look like a double wheel where the inner rotation is slower for the feeding station zone and the outer area is faster for the grazing zone. Not a problem I would have thought about. It got zapped. You don’t have to do all the paddocks at once but can do the divisions over time as you have the resources (time and money). i have used wormwood and mugwort for vermifuges, effective, but i didn’t use the artemesia’s last summer or this fall, and i’m seeing some morbidity this winter. Managed rotational grazing through paddocks makes sense no matter how many animals you have. We don’t supplemental feed commercial grain (just the occasional treats of bread for training and such) but we do get dairy mostly in the form of whey which provides essencial lycine which is lacking from the pasture. On the rooting and sustainability the key is rotation – Moving the animals to new spaces frequently. Huh, no, we haven’t tried fossil coal. The other thing we do is replace the forages of warm weather pastures with baled hay which is a mix of grasses and legumes. e.g., Our pigs eat local and in season too. Properly managed rotational grazing could give you 20 pigs on that land in our climate. Great blog and amazing comments and responses! To hazard a guess I would suggest trying 0.5 to 1 gallon of Jersey milk per hundred weight per day. They will smell, and badly. You will need to adapt things to your own soils, climate, resources, management style and other factors. The female reproductive system is complex and can fail at many points. As soon as they have, move them to the next space and put chickens in where the pigs were. -Walter. I have some photos I’ll post soon of a recent set of these. Feral hogs range from the swamplands around Reelfoot Lake, to the bottomlands of the Mississippi, to Land Between the Lakes, to the Tennessee River valley, and eastward to the Smoky Mountains. Also lucky at cards. As long as the materials are secure and safe for both you and the pigs, use whatever you can come up with. Also, when you order a 'whole pig' from your store- what is the weight? Two or three pigs can be done on a quarter acre as shown here. The sunchokes (Jerusalem artichokes) are also excellent as are beets and turnips. We want to rotate the animals on the pasture so that after the final animal is on the pasture we can use it the following year to garden, then the following year to bring it back to pasture and then start the animals on rotation again the year after. 1 acre is about 200 feet x 200 feet Correct, it’s a use it or lose situation. I ask that you don't steal and you do give fair credit to the creator. See the Pig Page and the Breeders Page for more details on their breeding. After researching swine diets and what was locally available for other feeds I hit on dairy which is something we can easily get from local cheese and butter makers in particular. Land management and housing. hi walter, (Remember, each pig needs 80+ sq. When you move them, how do you keep them there? We are absolutely new to this and want to start small with just a couple hogs to fill our freezer and share any excess with family and friends. In the United States, residential lawns average 10,871 square feet (or roughly a quarter of an acre). Once they are half way through they just keep going, shock or not, and then we have full scale piglet capturing posse launched. As the pigs graze they are also pooping and urinating which spreads fertilizer over the fields. With our Yorkshire, Berkshire, Large Black, Tamworth, Mainline, Blackieline and Redline (non-Tam) crosses we see the gilts typically come into fertility at about eight months and take then – that is to say get pregnant at eight months and farrow (deliver a litter) at about one year. They work well as long as you don’t have freezing weather. That said, I am not making any conscious effort to use all that data for evil so take a deep breath and don't worry about it since there isn't a lot you can do about it. Admittedly we haven’t had any sun for a few days but that seemed oddly low. i came across this site on pig tractors: (http://www.mofga.org/Publications/MaineOrganicFarmerGardener/Spring2006/RaisingOrganicHogsbytheTractorMethod/tabid/212/Default.aspx). hi sorry to bother you guys, I have 80 acres of cropland that is planted to corn for my cattle to graze in the winter and then I rotate the corn to my other field and leave the grazed one to fallow, I was wondering how many pigs It would take to keep that 80 acres ’tilled’ and black all summer. I would suggest aiming for ten to twenty paddocks. On a totally different topic, I had an interesting temperature reading today How you decide to raise your pigs depends upon what you have to work with, land and facilities wise, and what you are hoping to do with the pigs. For now, we have them in the old barn in their own spacious stall. People with flatter land go in and machine mow their paddocks time to time for this same reason but with our steep, rocky, stumpy land the mob grazing achieves the same benefit. In our case our soil alone has the right minerals but not all soils have it. I assume you will have it for sale here. In mild weather they don’t need any shelters and ours distain them. Manage it to improve the soils. We use trees and boulders for a lot of our fence posts since ledge is so close to the surface. Since we free feed I can’t give you exact numbers on minimums and maximums they’ll eat. I will require appropriate payment. I am planning to have a square shaped pasture with a thatch roofed, screened shelter where the pigs will be locked at night. The estimates vary widely, just in looking for the past few minutes I’ve found any where from 8 square feet to 10 pigs per acre. We pasture all the larger animals together. i have a huge annelid collected from my tamworth boar’s poop a year ago after using the wormwood. Watch the condition of the animals. Sorting and Driving Pigs. Would you start out with some piglets in the spring and bucher in the fall? Sell your pigs for money. When the pigs are ready to be sold at a market, they will be priced based on size and health. This is especially effective for small pigs, chickens and such but also will work with bigger pigs and sheep once they’re trained to it. I thought pigs would have to be brought indoors and fed on hay? Inside that fence there should be hot wires like you’ll use out in the field. Like just about everything else in the Universe prices, specifications, offers and everything are subject to change. Which is it? If I had to separate the pigs from the sheep I would rotate the sheep ahead. This is also a nice way to keep them busy!if(typeof __ez_fad_position != 'undefined'){__ez_fad_position('div-gpt-ad-familyfarmlivestock_com-banner-1-0')}; If you want the nest in a specific spot, you can “suggest” where you want the pigs to have their nest by bedding that area well and seeing if they agree with your choice. You may well need to worm them with Ivermec or Fenbenzadole. They’ll sleep in the spot they choose and will move the bedding to suit their needs. It is far better to do real managed rotational grazing on much larger paddocks than to confine the pigs into such tiny spaces. With the expansion of our pastures that we did this past fall we now have a lot more pasture, planning for the next 10 years. from dealers & private sellers. We free feed our dairy which is mostly whey, thus a lower fat content than milk. I have raised three groups of pigs on just pasture. We have a small flock of dairy goats and Icelandic sheep and chickens. Delivery Date(s): Choose your delivery date(s) below. The farm (and the farmer) benefits by having healthier and happier animals. 10 acres is about 400,000 sq-ft I suspect it isn’t necessary even in Florida if you do as above. The easier it is to get into, the more friends they will bring with them on the next pig feed raid. I am purchasing a large plot of land but for the time being I am interested in converting a six acre portion of the land into pasture and would like to use pigs to root and clear the land. Outside the hot wires have a good visual indicator (boards, logs, brush, stone walls, etc). Thus we added dairy to our pigs diet for the marbling and faster growth. For pigs that haven’t had electric exposure start with a securely physically fenced area when they get home. My question is when it comes to the use of biodigestors, the pigs are usually kept in confinement for maximum collection of the manure which produces energy as methane gas and odor&pathogen free, improved fertilizer which is then used to fertilize the fish ponds as a complete fishfeed. Pigs that grow up around other animals accept them as part of the scenery. Some feeds cause it, corn/soy being mentioned by the researchers. Is there a general rule of thumb and what works best for you? I don’t have experience, yet, with rotating cows with the pigs. The pig is raw, not cooked, and USDA Inspected. We live adjacent to a really wooded area and if they got free up in there it would be all over but the crying at that point. Without the dairy the pigs are protein limited by the lack of lycine and grow about a month slower to get to market weight – not a big issue. I think he is a publicity hound trying to get attention. Why have you chosen to have less pigs per acre? This would be more of a hobby probably than anything else. Sorry for so much info just want to give a clear picture. We use electric fencing extensively in our fields. Sugar Mountain Farm Pigs: Feeding and Grazing In fact, after you slaughter the animal the parts you don’t use such as the manure from the gut, offal, bones after soup, meat scraps or skin pieces, etc can all be composted to produce rich soil. In confinement feeding operations they clip the teeth of piglets to prevent damage from tit biting but this is not necessary. Rotationally grazing the pigs makes a … hi walter, Now what do you do? Frank, your situation will be different depending on what you have for pasture, forest, nuts, fruits, supplemental feeds, etc. You might also be interested in the article South Weaning Paddock which describes a weaning setup that is 100’x100′ divided into ten paddocks. We've raised three batches of pigs 100% on pasture. I’m in the Canary Islands and am thinking of getting into breeding a rare local variety of pig for meat. I’ve found it really interesting reading how much area one should have to raise pigs predominantly on pasture. My question is about size/feeding/weight – I see wild pigs are more compact, while farm raised for meat pigs are very obese looking….. Can I keep my breeders more lean and still have healthy active breeding pigs? As a first timer, planning on buying two young pigs to grow out and harvest myself in the fall. I would setup a strong perimeter fence and subdivide the field into many paddocks. How much would you think is the minimum to pasture a single pig? The chickens will smooth out the soil to a large degree and they’ll weed it. The main question is how much milk do pigs on pasture require? Selenium is one concern. The (il)logical extrapolation of all that is 10 square-feet per pound of pig if you are giving supplemental feed – Thus for a single finisher pig it would be 2,000 sq-ft per pig or about 20′ x 100′. If you get bare spots, just broad cast seed as above. These pigs are known for their excellent ability to successfully raise large litters. ft. That’s the size you need to have a beautiful pen for both of your pigs! This provides lysine, a critical limiting protein, for faster growth and more calories for better marbling (e.g., fat). -Faculty of Animal Husbandry – Sam Ratulangi Univ. Thanks SO much! You retain copyright to your works but you implicitly give permission for me, the recipient, to publish the content. i was reading some of your info on pasturing pigs and was curious about your fence set up. In your warmer climate parasite issues are a little different than they are for us here in the north where the winters kill the weak. In an earlier message you talked about expanding your farm greatly. You may also want to do a fecal – either yourself or through a local vet. My dream within the foreseable future is to start a farm in the tropics that involves a closed loop system of perrenial crops (sugarcane, bananas, etc…), pigs, biodigesters, fish ponds. One of the best parts about this type of pen set up is that when you double the pigs in the pen, you more than double the free space. And you will have to pay for every penny of their nutrition, so it's the most expensive way to raise pigs, as well. Out on pasture the piglets quickly dull their teeth on dirt. We tend to segregate as they get towards finisher age, separating ones we’re watching for potential breeders from those who will go to market each week. I figured the pigs would eat the leftover corn and cultivate it all for me. The second example is a common size for parking spaces in the U.S. is 8.5 ft. x 19 ft. (reference.com) This means the size of a parking space is actually bigger than the size you would need for your pig. My recommendations are based on the actual feeding in our pastures with just free fed dairy to supplement the amino-acid levels for lysine. Your pigs will love to root and reroot through the bedding, as well and the free space gives them the needed room. Don’t go so fast that you stumble. We recently bought three piglets and plan to pasture them in a rotational system using electric netting. And thanks a bunch Walter for doing this blog. You can use straw, wood chips, mulch or anything else that will absorb the liquid and the nutrients from the manure. Look for our label in stores and restaurants... We hope you enjoy our pastured pork! In the industry I’ve read that about 25% are infertile however that could be because I have a tighter selection criteria (only about 5% of our gilts get tested as breeders) and I’m more patient (waiting longer). http://zeri.org/ZERI/Pigs.html I guess the question is what would you do? We also offer direct sales of whole pigs, half pigs, quarter pigs, roasters, boxes of meat and CSAs for seasons & the whole year as well as live piglets for you to raise yourself. Now look above and notice that the average lawn (noted in the home advisor quote above) has enough acreage, exactly enough!, for the family in that house to raise a few pigs! During the warm months the pigs sleep out in the fields. That’s rather too much – I aim for 3/4″ to 1″ of back fat including skin thickness at slaughter. Classifieds in Paris, VA: Triumph 4 Post Auto Lift in Winchester, Warm up in one of in Winchester, Warm up in one of in Warrenton, Free hardwood for firewood in … Don't use too sharp a pencil. When you want a goat for milk and you've finally decided to take the plunge and really start looking, you have to wonder about the breed of doe you really need. I have the challenge that each year I plant more but our herd keeps growing. If you look around online, the amount of land needed per pig on pasture varies quite a bit. to feed them with. Ten pigs can be done on a full acre with proper management. We have whey and I know the forage isn’t great, so we will have supplemental feed. Thanks for this post. Next move on to larger pastures. I have a low opinion of those “pig tractors”. If so, does that change the duration of time you leave them in each pasture? Rotate in after 30 days or more. Our water comes from springs out of the mountain which we run through a series of pipes to waterers and ponds. My goal is to eventually grow enough veggies to provide food for our livestock through the entire winter until new pastures are ready. Utilize the cycle of life to your advantage and your environment will improve. Things change over the years. (See the FAQ for terminology.). If you're under 13 realize that animal sex does get discussed on this site - we're a farm. In his book Storey’s Guide to Raising Pigs, Klober noted that he maintains a 10- to 20-foot strip of sod at the bottom of each of his drylots. Am I pampering them too much? Since we are in the subtropics, receiving 180+ inches of rain yearly, vegetation grows quickly. Use good sense and confirm everything with your own research and testing. This could be a bug or a feature. They didn’t say how much Jersey milk they were feeding per day or what else. Land should therefore be relatively level and free draining in a low rainfall area (less than 800mm/year). Kidding about the deodorant and air fresheners, of course, but not kidding about eliminating the stink. In time I expect to gradually further improve the pasture which will increase its capacity. The netting should be at least 32″ high for big pigs – they can jump. Your info is amazing!!! Remember that email is a postcard open to all who want to read it as it passes through their servers. As we begin to utilize the new fields we are planning a rotation that will result in more age segregation. 4) larger pigs root deeper than smaller pigs. The most common size is 8.5 feet wide by 19 feet long. What we are really doing here is keeping the feed exposed to the birds and rodents to a minimum. Currently our herd is a bit skewed in sizes as can be seen in the recent photo above. Occasionally we’ll have a Lolita take as early as six months. 200 pigs on 10 acres is about 2,000 sq-ft per pig If you can also get other things then that is also great. This is because we have fairly poor, acidic, low quality, thin mountain soils. Walter Jeffries Tinker, Tailor… A bit eclectic & a tad eccentric, polymath, quantum mechanic & Farmer. The land is mostly brush with sandy soil, trees, bushes, and briar and contains a small densly grown in stream located in the midlands in SC. This is the single best article I’ve read concerning pigs and land. I’ve seen too many cases where people made huge investments into something only to find it didn’t work for them, they didn’t have the markets or they simply didn’t like it. Away from residences (around 8-10 meter away downwind). Or is it economical to keep a sow and boar over winter? As to mountainous land, that’s what we have here too. based on your experience, do you think this is an efficient method for pasturing pigs? Walter Jeffries and his family have been raising pastured pigs in Vermont for ages, so we’ll go with his numbers. What will they need from you and are they hard to raise? Buy and sell new and used farm equipment online. Your best bet with the manure is to compost it. anybody got a scoop on parasites? Any thing on your pants? Our pastured pigs are farm pigs and even the breeders who are up to eight years old have only about 0.75″ of back fat since their diet is low calorie. We’d like to divide the area into three or four paddocks, and buy two shoats in early spring (not necessarily this year). Things happen in steps, not as a smooth incline. How much space do you need for pigs? Fortunately, we, like our pigs, don’t spend our lives indoors all the time and we have shared spaces. If you have some dairy and eggs that’s really good for more protein, lysine and calories. Learn the basics of feeding and care, how to properly care for newborn landrace piglets. But even today, pastures and forages may contribute a practical and economical part of feeding hogs. Your very inspiring. Online Ordering is now available via the Quick Order Form. This deserves a post. I would guess that they are getting minerals from it. I suspect you’ll get soil compaction and too much rooting with such a small area. Breed it out. For clarification, the tit biting is done by vampire bats, so I need to enclose the pigs at night in a screened area for protection. Sad, but true. The best times to seed are with mob grazing, just before a hard rain (as we just did) and just before frosts. Learn how your comment data is processed. It’s all good food. The site should be protected from the sun (shade from trees) and have ample fresh air. I’m also wondering about density… While we have more land much of its is mountaneous and unfenced… I’d like to start with 1-2 acres and see how it goes, even if it means supplemental feeds. You can familiarize yourself with the detailed characteristics of these animals: the history of their breeding, how purebred Landrace pigs should look like - a description of their exterior. Real life isn't as exact as the Swine Science book would like us to believe. During the warm seasons with large paddocks it works quite well to run multi-age herds which is also quite easy. In the United States, the size of parking spaces varies. Thus I would think you would want to greatly water down the whole milk to avoid ‘over conditioning’ which is to say too fat pigs. I would buy. Where do you buy? The unpalatable plants tend to not hold up well to mob grazing whereas grasses, legumes and such thrive on it. For winter we have open sheds but much of the time the pigs choose to sleep out in the open under the stars. The confinement aspect required to capture the manure is something that makes biodigesters outside the scope of what we do here since we do managed rotational grazing. Put a knee down in the pen. For growing pigs, it is recommended that you plan for around 8 square feet of space per pig. My question and concern is I have read that if a gilt is not bred before a certain window she may stop being fertile. 1) more pigs on fewer square feet root up the soil over a shorter time. Today the tiny cottage high was 55°F and the low was 53°F. Pig sizes and ability to digest forages varies. Visit the Poll Page for more. Guinea Pig - Panch (sar 4049) - Small - Adult - Female Guinea Pig - Panch (sar 4049) - Small - Adult - Female I'm one of 5 female and 1 male guinea pigs currently at the Even a small space can be managed for rotational grazing which will improve the land and provide more food for the animals while breaking parasite life cycles. One person who buys piglets from us feeds their pigs whole Jersey cow milk. The best thing you can do as far as arranging the pen is to make sure that the water and the feed are the easiest to reach, since you will be carrying buckets or dragging in a hose. For true non-commercial use I generally just ask for a link. as in paddocks arranged like spokes in a circular design around a central shelter. If your parents haven't had that discussion about the facts of life with you yet I suggest you explain it to them. UltraSourceUSA. Is there any reason this couldn’t be combined with a free-range system? the 30% losses are loses for the individuals pigs, but not the herd. People who have bought our piglets and feed Jersey milk told me that in eight months their gilts put on 4″ of back fat.
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