[Browntea]

Hi all,

I know there are very strict laws in place when it comes to what we can and can't feed our pigs, my question is can I feed them fruit and veg from my local veg shop? It's all the things that won't sell, and have only been in a veg shop.

Tia

[shetlandpaul]

yes you can. don't tae it into the kitchen thou.

[pigs n chickens]

Hi Tia,
As far as I know that would be fine. As long as the fruit and veg has not been in a kitchen nor in contact with any meat products you should be fine. I've done the same with a local supermarket in the past and the pigs certainly loved their friday treat - they had a more varied diet than I did!
If you have any concerns check out the defra website but I think you'll be fine as long as you keep the fruit and veg out of your kitchen.
Helen    

[manian]

hi
fruit and veg shops are fine as long as they do not sell any meat products.
and as helen said it mustn't be in the kitchen.
potatoes need to be cooked, and our pigs like most veg cooked (we do it on a gas ring in our garage

[Eve]

Ours gobble everything up raw as it's mostly fruit and cucumbers from wholesalers (though they don't mind cooked stuff). Bakery leftovers are a big hit, I walked into the pen once with a bag of doughnuts and it took them about a nanosecond to eat the lot!


 

[oaklandspigs]

potatoes need to be cooked,

Yes don't feed any green ones, they are poisenous.  However normal potatoes can be fed raw, but pigs find the startch hard to convert to sugars, so have little nutritional value.  Cooking (as Manian says outside ) turns the starch into sugars, so provides much more value, but is not wiorth it (your call of course) for a few potatoes, so as long as this is not the only veg they are getting, you can feed raw ones quite happily.

[Browntea]

Thanks everyone for all your replys.

One more question on food for the pigs....

Can they eat chestnuts? These are the ones you eat at Xmas not grown in the uk they are chinese, Just a few left over from the production of chestnut purée!! Yuk!!

Thanks once again

[HappyHippy]

Chestnuts would be fine for them.
BUT if you've had them in your kitchen (whilst making chestnut puree) then it's a no I'm afraid 
You can't give anything which has been in a domestic or commercial kitchen full stop. (I know it sounds a bit over the top, but that's the rules  )

[Browntea]

Many thanks Happyhippy 

[Hilarysmum]

But if you can collect them from the woods or anywhere else outdoors the pigs will LOVE them.

[bloomer]

i don't keep pigs but would love to why the rule about no food from a kitchen?

is there a good reason or just interfering beaurocracy?

[manian]

i think its to do with potential contamination with meat.

[HappyHippy]

Yup, got it in one !
There's a risk of contaminated meat entering the food chain (think BSE, ok I know that's cows - but same principle) and I believe there can be a risk of your pigs contracting swine fever and other diseases - but without double checking my book I'm not 100% on that.
I think it was probably way too much of a nightmare to try and make seperate rulings so it's a blanket ban. Although I've heard rumblings that 'pet' pig keepers are exempt from the ban (I don't know if it's true or not) but personally I wouldn't risk it. So many of these pet 'micro' pigs are getting rehomed because they get too big - how long before some are sausaged and we have food chain problems from that ?

[ballingall]

Think Foot and Mouth and well. The 2001 outbreak started, I believe from pigs in the Newcastle area being fed on contaminated meat.

From Wikipedia-

"The first case of the disease to be detected was at Cheale Meats abattoir in Little Warley, Essex on 19 February 2001 on pigs from Buckinghamshire and the Isle of Wight. Over the next four days, several more cases were announced in Essex. On 23 February a case was confirmed in Heddon-on-the-Wall, Northumberland, from where the pig in the first case had come; this farm was later confirmed as the source of the outbreak and the owner, Bobby Waugh of Pallion, was convicted of failing to inform the authorities of a notifiable disease, and later of feeding his pigs "untreated waste".[2]

The consensus today is that the FMD virus came from infected or contaminated meat that was part of the garbage being fed to pigs at Burnside Farm in Heddon-on-the-wall.[8] The garbage had not been properly heat-sterilized and the virus had thus been allowed to infect the pigs. Seeing as FMD virus was apparently not present in the UK beforehand and given the import restrictions for meat from countries known to harbour FMD, it is likely that the infected meat had been illegally imported to the UK. Such imports are likely to be for the catering industry and a total ban on feeding of catering waste containing meat or meat products was introduced early in the epidemic.[8]"


Beth

[Hilarysmum]

... yet in my pig producers on line magazine and in my French pig producer mag. it is stated that the EU are considering allowing meat protein to be used in animal feed production. 

Sometimes I dont know if I am on my head or my heels with the rules ...