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Author Topic: Yearly costs per pig  (Read 16612 times)

Dundonald hens

  • Joined Aug 2010
Yearly costs per pig
« on: June 06, 2011, 10:55:59 pm »
As I am new to pig keeping and have only evr had 2 for slaughter could I ask
How much per year per pig
1. Vacination/wormers
2. Feed if on free range rotational ground planted specificaly for pig fodder
3. What would you plant on the above ground
4. The average vet bills for well looked after, well feed, well housed

I was planning on puting the 3 of them in a small plot about 1 acre divided up into smaller areas rotavated and planted out to give them a good feed source for most of the year since i have all the equipment to do this and it seems the cheapest way to feed them ??? and there houses will be handbuilt with traditional stone on the outside,insulated and lined with a washable surface and a dinky slate roof just like minature house,
and before anyone starts babling on about being a skin flint and can I afford vet bills yes I can and do often for all the reast of the beasts we have


HappyHippy

  • Guest
Re: Yearly costs per pig
« Reply #1 on: June 07, 2011, 08:39:16 am »
I was planning on puting the 3 of them in a small plot about 1 acre divided up into smaller areas rotavated and planted out to give them a good feed source for most of the year since i have all the equipment to do this and it seems the cheapest way to feed them ???
Whether you're growing for slaughter or keeping pigs to breed with, they all need proper pig food to get the right balance of vitamins, minerals and protien for healthy growth - either a mix of straights (which you will need a licence to mix & feed) or pig nuts/rolls. You can certainly suppliment this with home grown stuff, but it shouldn't replace the basic diet completely, especially in the first year.
Vaccinations/wormers could easily be more than £100 a year - depending on your reigime.
Can't comment on 'average' vets bills either - but with a single call out often costing around £100 by the time they add the meds, it can be very costly if you have a sick pig.
But you've also got to factor in other stuff - the disinfectant footwash and disinfectant for it, needles, syringes, bedding, etc etc etc.
HTH
Karen

robert waddell

  • Guest
Re: Yearly costs per pig
« Reply #2 on: June 07, 2011, 09:10:53 am »
what you are asking is the old indian rope trick (how long is a piece of string)
1 vacination and wormers      how long are you keeping your pigs      you may be lucky and not need any if the breeder done all them before you purchased them also depends on the health status of the breeders herd
2 it is a myth that pigs dont need hard feeding      3 pigs on an acre will trash it without supplementary feed
3 sweetcorn is idel but what are you going to feed them until it is ready
4 the average vet bills          with well looked after pigs owners know what they are doing      diddly squat :o
all to often new owners will thing nothing of spending hundreds of pounds on new arks etc then scimp on the cost of the pigs they buy  if you have not had pigs before better spending more on the pigs and less on designer des rez        at least with straw shelters you can burn them when the notion goes of you :farmer:

Hilarysmum

  • Joined Oct 2007
Re: Yearly costs per pig
« Reply #3 on: June 07, 2011, 09:20:49 am »
Young piglets/pigs need  1lb of hard feed per day per month age.  

An acquaintance of ours feeds veg, grows his own, runs his pigs on the ground in which the feed is sown.  (3 acres 7 pigs).  He uses a minimum of pig nuts to ensure they have their vitamins.    The pigs are not well grown, when he slaughtered the most recent lot, there was not enough fat to make sausages.
The ground is a dust bowl now in June.  

Pig feed has evolved as a science, although the costs for commercially produced pig food are high, the finished carcass is well worth the extra expense  (imho)

Dundonald hens

  • Joined Aug 2010
Re: Yearly costs per pig
« Reply #4 on: June 07, 2011, 08:15:57 pm »
Proper pig feed ?  they Need to be feed ?
What did they do for the thousands of years without us ? did theygrow there own and take it to the mills ? oh thats right there was no mills.
I actualy hoped that there would be someone on here that has the same vision that I do.
That being that I could grow fodder for pigs and give them as little "proper pig feed" as possable and try to get my pigs back to the way they were I have even heard of dare I say it "grass reared pigs" that are not as fat as pigs feed with modern comercial feeds but are aparantly far beetr tasting ??
And of course there would only be some of my spare time,the cost of some seeds etc against the high costs of modern feeds, the enviremental impact on producing, packaging them,transporting them.
How big is your piggys carbon totter ??/

littlemisspiggy!

  • Joined Sep 2010
  • NOTTINGHAMSHIRE
    • just left of the 20th century
Re: Yearly costs per pig
« Reply #5 on: June 07, 2011, 08:54:13 pm »
ive been reading alot about 'old day' pig feeding and way back when alot, if not most of the country folk had a pig that lived on scraps and slop,veg and roots when land had been harvested so i dont see how now suddenly pigs cannot survive without 'farmgate sow n weaner' or 'badminton pig nuts' at £8 plus a pop...surely there must be something these days that can be grown and fed...im sure you get organic pig food so whats in that must have been grown somewhere?? ??? its an interesting one but i would love to here from some 'older' (sorry) farmers that used to rear on food not 'feed'.. :pig: ??? :pig:
'can't rain all the time!'

Dundonald hens

  • Joined Aug 2010
Re: Yearly costs per pig
« Reply #6 on: June 07, 2011, 09:07:12 pm »
litle miss piggy i would be very intrested to hear anything you have learnt about the more traditional ways of feeding

fifixx

  • Joined Mar 2010
  • Shillingstone, Dorset
    • Bere Marsh Farm
Re: Yearly costs per pig
« Reply #7 on: June 07, 2011, 09:24:36 pm »
In the "old days" left-overs from the house were fed to the pigs, so that way they would get probably a fairly balanced diet if they then ate fresh grass, by-products of cheese-making, fodder crops.


oaklandspigs

  • Joined Nov 2009
  • East Sussex
    • OaklandsPigs
Re: Yearly costs per pig
« Reply #8 on: June 07, 2011, 09:35:48 pm »
Quote from mid 1800's

"Most people kept pigs, and made the practise of opening the pig sties every morning and letting the occupants out into the village street each day.  There can hardly have been any pretty front gardens.  Pigs browsed on grass that grew by the open drain"

The sight of pigs in the streets was a common one.

Pigs were also kept near breweries and distilleries, and fed on the waste from them.

Many 19th centruary villagers collected "washings" - the water food had been cooked in and the dishes subsequently washed up in, and gave it to the pig keepers in return for which they would get some liver or other small part of offal when the pig was killed.

In East Yorkshire a strip of barley was grown on smallholdings to provide additional food.

One of the foods used was potatoes which were cooked for pigs, and mixed with barley meal or peas.  Potatoes were grown in allotments and gardens. Neighbours would bring potato peelings.

They were also put into woods during autumn to forage for acorns and beech mast.

Of course most of the above is now illegal :)


« Last Edit: June 07, 2011, 09:37:41 pm by oaklandspigs »
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Tamsaddle

  • Joined May 2011
  • Hampshire, near Portsmouth
Re: Yearly costs per pig
« Reply #9 on: June 07, 2011, 09:40:23 pm »
Sadly the traditional way of feeding pigs is now illegal - swill.   When I was a small girl, many decades ago, my uncle had pigs which were fed on all the kitchen and garden waste, plus the left over, unpasteurised milk from his two hand milked cows.   Everything went in, meat, bread, veg, fishbones, gravy, christmas pudding.  All this was collected in an old bath outside, and the pig man came and collected buckets of it every day.   The pigs loved it and probably got all the protein they needed which is nowadays provided by pig nuts instead.   They also got left over fodder crops and grass as well.    So, like it or not, nuts are the only way to adequately feed them their protein and vitamins as the law stands now.  

robert waddell

  • Guest
Re: Yearly costs per pig
« Reply #10 on: June 07, 2011, 09:42:37 pm »
sadly today we are restricted in what we can do and feed to our pigs that is why it is all bought in feeding
10 years ago we were allowed to feed waste food (brock) this was from schools hotels  restaurants etc this practise had been going on for years longer than i can remember (nearly 60 now) how they feed there pigs in Victorian times and before  you will need to read some books relating to the subject
if there was a creamery near by they  fed skimmed milk and whey
now grass fed pigs is something i would love to see       simply because there wont be much grass left when they are finished a hungry pig will root
in Asia they have pigs in the basement of the hotels to convert the humane s**t and left overs
thousands of years ago there were not the variates of pig there is today or the vast quantaties of them :pig:

Dundonald hens

  • Joined Aug 2010
Re: Yearly costs per pig
« Reply #11 on: June 07, 2011, 09:58:04 pm »
Lets say a pig need a tonne of food a year ? just as a easy number so could you not grow
100kg barley
100kg arrots
100kg of apples
100kg carrots
100kg turnips
100kg pumpkin
100kg of corn
300kg grass
I know a pig may not need a tonne but I have jus used this as an example and was looking for infrmatio on what these crops could be to allo food all year and some stored for the realy frosty weather.

robert waddell

  • Guest
Re: Yearly costs per pig
« Reply #12 on: June 07, 2011, 10:01:40 pm »
well that is your first problem you need a licence to mix your feed

Dundonald hens

  • Joined Aug 2010
Re: Yearly costs per pig
« Reply #13 on: June 07, 2011, 10:04:33 pm »
I never said I was going to mix it ?? whats wrong with a just giving it to them the way it is ? or let them, dig it up there selfs ?

robert waddell

  • Guest
Re: Yearly costs per pig
« Reply #14 on: June 07, 2011, 10:17:42 pm »
if you feed the barley and corn to pigs it has to be milled or rolled or it just comes through them    but silly me you knew that already just as you were not going to mix any feed        we will all be asking you for advice shortly ;)

 

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