Author Topic: New to pigs - fodder crop for summer (Read 4064 times)

princesslayer · « **on:** April 01, 2015, 09:33:10 pm »

Hello

We are hoping to fatten a couple of weaners next summer for the freezer, and would like to grow a crop of something to offset buying in food. It seems from research that they'll pretty much eat most vegetables.

Is there something I can plant that will be ready in the spring, like overwintering turnips/fodder beet etc? Does anybody do this on a small scale? I can't plant them this year in a place where the pigs can get to them, so I'll have to dig them up for them frequently. The following year they will hopefully have dug me a plot so I'll have more space

I expect this question has been asked alot, but I couldn't find much on a search. Thanks for your patience.

toaster · « **Reply #1 on:** April 01, 2015, 11:14:38 pm »

I've looked at this but on a small scale it takes a decent amount of space to grow not many pig meals!

It may be worth looking at the very cheap horse carrots, swedes and parsnips that horse owners buy, I can get big nets of carrots for a couple of pounds

SophieLeeds · « **Reply #2 on:** April 02, 2015, 07:59:26 am »

We have done this previously and found in our experience that unless you have an acre+ available to plant things such as fodder beet then it's not worth the hassle. You need to dig the ground over, weed it, plant the seeds, pull the finished veg, and seeds such as fodder beet can be £60 a box!

A 10m x 3m patch lasts for around 2 weeks for about 4 pigs if I remember correctly.

Compare this against buying a tonne of them for £20 and its not really worth the effort. Buying them in tonne crates for around this price will still lower your feed costs so it's worth doing this.

HTH

princesslayer · « **Reply #3 on:** April 02, 2015, 04:21:39 pm »

Thanks all, good advice. Will go for the tonne box or sack of carrots approach I think!

devonlad · « **Reply #4 on:** April 03, 2015, 09:40:45 am »

Hope this isn't hijacking but I was going to start a new post but thought this was close to what I wanted to ask about. Like OP we are trying to find the most cost effective way of feeding our weaners. previously we have largely relied on proprietary pig food (just less faff) and work roughly on the 1b a day for each month of life (up to max of 6lb. this has been slightly (and only slightly) supplemented by pea pods or bean pods direct from the garden and some apples come autumn. they live outdoors in a grassy, weedy paddock (till it turns to mud) and root about eating roots and worms I guess. I had toyed with trying to grow a bit for them, fodder beet for example but realised like others that you'd have to grow a hell of a lot to make any real indentation into the feed bill. we currently have a couple of saddleback weaners about 3 months old and when they finish we will be getting another 6 or so. This time we are trying something new- they have a 50-50 split by weight of soaked rolled barley and pellets. this is slightly cheaper as we pay about £7 for a sack of pellets and £4.40 for a sack of rolled barley. a friend has just suggested that soaked dried peas are a good way of growing them on and heres the question- would we need to feed less peas by weight as they are clearly a high protein source.
also any other ideas for cutting the cost- we've tried to access some bakery waste but nothing doing. we feed them "pig food" as we assume it contains the range of nutrients required, but is this wasteful. could we just give them rolled barley and peas for example. sorry to be longwinded but hope the questions are worth asking

oaklandspigs · « **Reply #5 on:** April 03, 2015, 12:02:36 pm »

The questions are always worth asking !

The short answer is most 'can I feed them cheaper' questions is 'not to any significant degree'

If you can get free stuff, then you can make a difference, but all free stuff will not be in the right nutritional proportions, so they will take longer.

The simple logic is that if you can take x + y + z and make it a cheaper feed than a large industrial company with economies of scale, vast buying power etc. - then why are they not doing that?

So yes home mixed feeds can look cheaper, but they will lack key amino acids that let the pig build muscle and much of the additional protein is simply pooed out as it is not in the correct ratios, so they either take longer to fatten (so more feed and benefit is lost) or run to fat, or both !

Anke · « **Reply #6 on:** April 04, 2015, 11:24:49 am »

Home-produced milk is still a good source and cheaper as long as your goats/cows produce it anyway and you aren't doing anything else with the milk (like making cheese and selling it at a profit).