Thanks for all your responses. These pigs are not to be sold, they are to be eaten by me and my neighbours, who are paying cost price. I am not a farmer, I am a man with a field. I have every intention of raising the best pork I possibly can, that is the entire purpose of the exercise.
People seem to respond very strongly to the word "cheap", I word which I emphasise I did not use. I want to keep my feed costs to a minimum for three reasons: 1) When I did my figuring I come out spending more on feed than it would cost me to buy a finished pig from the local rare breed keeper. I am more than happy to do all the work involved in keeping them simply for the pleasure of being a pig owner but we all have limited means and it does not make any sense to pay more than the going rate on top of all the work. 2) Pigs have been kept for thousands of years on whatever waste food was available. I am aware of the legal restrictions now in place on this practice but surely in our developed world of vast food waste it should be possible to tap this wasted resource and legally continue this practice. 3) We currently have no local feed mill so I either have to buy feed by the bag from the local supplier which is hugely expensive or by the ton for delivery which presents storage problems and significant delivery costs. In both cases there is no information on origin and I assume it is coming from the US or S.America and will contain GM along with who knows what else.
The dairy is registered to supply whey as feed, so no legal problems there. I haven't seen any legal restrictions on using spent grain, and the brewery I get it from send all the rest for cattle feed. For clarity I am in Scotland and I think restrictions are slightly different here.
I have acquired a broken chest freezer which should be vermin and weather proof which I reckon should hold half a ton of feed so once I get another I should be able to buy feed in bulk. I fully intend to continue feeding pellets, I'm really looking for advice on appropriate substitutions amounts of the various other foodstuffs I get hold of. All the advice I have found online does not mention amounts. It looks like TonyG's doc will help me with that, thanks.. I mentioned cutting out feed completely only as a query, this is not my plan.
On another note, harmony says Berkshires will finish at about 65kgs and go no further, which ties with what my books say, but the breeder I got them from says she regularly takes them higher. Be great to take a couple to baconer weight, anyone have any experience of this (successful or failed!)?
It is an interesting point you make between your costings and your local rare breed pig farmers cost for a finished pig. Maybe someone has done their sums wrong?
Yes, back yards pigs used to be raised on waste. Some of that waste included meat and bones. It took a lot longer to finish pigs and in an era where meat was not a daily part of peoples diet a finished pig was a different size to what we would recognise as finished today.
People did say there were alternatives to feeding just manufactured food and they also gave their view based on experience and knowledge.
Have you asked your feed merchant if you can buy a ton but collect weekly. Some local places will let you do this so you take advantage of the ton rate but only take what you can store and they keep a tally.
The reason berkshires and also middle whites are finished at lower weights is that after that point they then lay down fat. However, there is no reason why you can't take them to bigger weights. Of course, bacon can be made from a pork pig these days.
One of things you might like to consider in the future is the type of pigs you keep. It costs the same to kill a small pig as a big one. Modern pigs and modern crosses will get to weight quicker.
Topic: Feed advice for first time pig keeper (Read 4775 times)
