The Accidental Smallholder Forum

Livestock => Pigs => Topic started by: PigsEatWeeds on November 13, 2012, 03:18:30 pm

Title: The cost of keeping pigs
Post by: PigsEatWeeds on November 13, 2012, 03:18:30 pm

Hello,

I am trying to find out the real cost of keeping pigs. From the average cost of fencing, the price of arcs, to the amount you can get for a pig.

Other than for the cost of slaughter and butchery, I can't seem to find too much specific information. Can anybody help?

Title: Re: The cost of keeping pigs
Post by: Dan on November 13, 2012, 03:53:12 pm

We put some of our costs up here in 2011:

http://www.accidentalsmallholder.net/livestock/pigs/pig-costs/ (http://www.accidentalsmallholder.net/livestock/pigs/pig-costs/)

For fencing, arks, how much you can get for a pig - the answer is always 'it depends'... On your ability, your land, the size of your intended operation, the breed of pig, whether you'll be breeding pigs, whether you're planning to sell weaners, older pigs through the ring, or butchered meat, and so on. There are so many variables that the 'real cost' will vary widely depending on the situation.

For fencing, if you're getting a contractor to supply and install fencing it'll cost far more than if you did the work yourself.

For arks - Google it, there are lots of ark suppliers, or it's not too hard to get the parts to build your own.

Sorry if this isn't much help, but there's no straightforward answer.  :-\

Title: Re: The cost of keeping pigs
Post by: Marsbar on November 13, 2012, 06:07:51 pm

Hi, :wave:


I have just taken 2 of our pigs to EV Slacks in Doncaster and they charged £20 slaughter/cutting of each pig.


HTH


Richard

Title: Re: The cost of keeping pigs
Post by: rispainfarm on November 13, 2012, 07:51:09 pm

Fencing and arks are usually the biggest initial outlay, You can cut the cost of an ark by buying second hand or making one, but whatever you do, don't try to do fencing on the cheap, it has to be done well so it strong and it last and does the job of keeping the pigs in. Making your own arks is alot cheaper than buying if you have the time, as Dan says, it is easy to source your own materials and you are not paying the percentage which is put on the arks. 

Title: Re: The cost of keeping pigs
Post by: hughesy on November 13, 2012, 09:39:06 pm

Can't believe no one's mentioned feed! Even if you only rear a couple of weaners from 8 weeks to pork weight it's gonna make a big dent in your bank balance.

Title: Re: The cost of keeping pigs
Post by: Fowgill Farm on November 14, 2012, 09:56:31 am

Quote from: hughesy on November 13, 2012, 09:39:06 pm

Can't believe no one's mentioned feed! Even if you only rear a couple of weaners from 8 weeks to pork weight it's gonna make a big dent in your bank balance.

Agree i'm using a 25kg sack per day with my lot 3 sows, 2 boars & 5 fatteners so thats £8.25 every day! It soon adds up and the price ain't gonna come down anythime soon. Practical pigs magazine has some costings in it this quarter if you can get your hands on a copy.
mandy :pig:

Title: Re: The cost of keeping pigs
Post by: Dan on November 14, 2012, 10:30:08 am

Quote from: hughesy on November 13, 2012, 09:39:06 pm

Can't believe no one's mentioned feed! Even if you only rear a couple of weaners from 8 weeks to pork weight it's gonna make a big dent in your bank balance.

There's feed info on the page I linked to. We calculated our weaners took about 400Kg of feed each from 8 wks to slaughter weight.

Title: Re: The cost of keeping pigs
Post by: Fowgill Farm on November 14, 2012, 10:33:39 am

Quote from: Dan on November 14, 2012, 10:30:08 am

Quote from: hughesy on November 13, 2012, 09:39:06 pm

Can't believe no one's mentioned feed! Even if you only rear a couple of weaners from 8 weeks to pork weight it's gonna make a big dent in your bank balance.

There's feed info on the page I linked to. We calculated our weaners took about 400Kg of feed each from 8 wks to slaughter weight.

based on my feed then Dan it would cost £132 per pig to get it to slaughter weight.
cartainly 'food' for thought!
mandy :pig:

Title: Re: The cost of keeping pigs
Post by: rispainfarm on November 14, 2012, 10:43:34 am

We are paying £9.50 for a 25k sack

Title: Re: The cost of keeping pigs
Post by: kja on November 14, 2012, 11:04:50 am

our last pigs that went off for meat had 4lb of feed a day (we do not do the plus a 1/4lb a week any more) so from 8 weeks to slaughter weight at 25 weeks they each munched through 476lb (216kg) feed based on this weeks prices that would have cost me £71 our feed is now £6.50 20kg the return was 144lb  meat & the sausages we forgot to weigh in addition to the weight.

Title: Re: The cost of keeping pigs
Post by: hughesy on November 14, 2012, 08:25:50 pm

Ours are eating just over a 20kg bag every day and it'll go up a bit as we've got a litter of 9 that are being kept on until they hit pork weight which is another couple of months away. I buy a ton pallet at a time which works out at 7 quid a bag. It's a nice feeling having a pallet full in stock but it's scary how fast it disappears. Our adult pigs are on 2kg a day each which I adjust slightly dependent on their condition, ie reduce it a bit if they're putting weight on.

Title: Re: The cost of keeping pigs
Post by: P6te on November 15, 2012, 12:27:05 pm

Some while I did a spread sheet showing the feeding costs. I've just tidied it up and taken a screen shot so I can share the information (I can't see how I can post an Excel Spreadsheet here)

The basis of it as shown is £8 for a 25kg sack and 1lb / day / month of their life principle. I've shown it for a single pig so you can easily do the sums that based on that.

(http://i1140.photobucket.com/albums/n578/P6te/Feedingcosts.jpg)

Pete

Title: Re: The cost of keeping pigs
Post by: Womble on November 15, 2012, 03:22:16 pm

Ouch!

We were thinking about getting some weaners next year, but I have to say I'm thinking again now!  Adding up some of the figures mentioned above gives:

2 weaners    100
2x 400kg [email protected] per 25kg    264
Pig ark materials    50
Fencing upgrades    50
Slaughter & Cutting @ 25 each    50
total:    514

So if each pig were to yield 48kg of prime cuts (from Dan's link), you'd need to price that at a bit over £5.00 per kg to break even.  Given that Tescos joint prices (the easiest I could find) range from £3.50 to £10 per kg, it's clear this isn't going to make any return in price terms (though I hope it would in terms of welfare and taste of course).

Oh dear! Decisions, decisions!!  :pig: ;D

Title: Re: The cost of keeping pigs
Post by: Mrs Snoodles on November 15, 2012, 03:32:42 pm

You can reduce your feed bill by getting a cross especially with a more modern breed.  they finish quicker. If they are a late Spring Summer project then grazing can account for up to 15 percent of diet. 
Remember once youve got things up and running you can always do it again.  3 weaners sold in halves, you should be able to keep a half, make a bit of money, sell the rest to friends.

Title: Re: The cost of keeping pigs
Post by: Berkshire Boy on November 15, 2012, 03:36:01 pm

Womble you can't compare your own pork with Tesco, to be honest the price is irrelevant when it comes down to the quality you will get.

Title: Re: The cost of keeping pigs
Post by: Sudanpan on November 15, 2012, 03:46:26 pm

You definitely cannot begin to compare Tesco's 'pork' with own produced pork.


Raising free range pork is never going to be a cheap method of producing pork, what it is is a much less expensive way of getting your hands on some top quality free range/slow grown pork  :thumbsup:

Title: Re: The cost of keeping pigs
Post by: deepinthewoods on November 15, 2012, 03:47:31 pm

it would be interesting to see some figures for kune kunes. as a comparison.

Title: Re: The cost of keeping pigs
Post by: CaroleBulmer on November 15, 2012, 04:22:33 pm

I think if you are going to take the plunge you have to be aware that if you lose one (or more), and it can happen then there goes your profit.  We have always bought four and normally ours works out free as the cost is soaked up in the price that we sell the three for, however, we have been lucky in that we have freinds with over productive gardening patches.  With the ever increasing feed prices, I think that I am going to have to think long and hard before I purchase any in the near future - although you can not beat the taste.

Title: Re: The cost of keeping pigs
Post by: Canadian Sheepfarmer on November 15, 2012, 04:28:09 pm

We are pretty much self sufficient in food, I certainly wouldn't buy meat, and haven't for many years. I have kept pigs for the freezer from time to time but have given it up. If you have a goat or a sheep or a beef animal then most of its lifetime feed can be produced from grass and forbes. With pigs, if they are to finish, and not involve you meeting the animal welfare authorities, you have to provide them with just about every calorie. Fine if you grow grain, or it is as cheap as I can get it for here, but for most people in the UK that would involve buying it. And this just doesn't stack up in a hungry world IMHO.  :(
 
Grain is for people, or chickens, not pigs! Sheep can take a foodform that we cannot eat, ie rough grazing, and transform it into an animal protein that we can eat. There are lots of places that are just scenery and rough grazing from an agricultural standpoint, if we can turn that into food it has to be worthwhile?
 
Personally I eat very little red meat these days. I raise 50 meat birds outside on grass each year, and we eat the odd lamb and goat kid from time to time. I eat beef [sad to say usually in the form of an Angus burger :-[ ] on my occasional trips to the Big City, about twice a year, but find I don't miss pork at all.
Feels like a heart attack about to happen!
 
Don't get me wrong I like pigs as an animal, I have had some great friends over the years, but as a fledgling smallholder I would think twice about pigs on a small acreage and a tight budget.
 
Just my 10 cents worth!   :sheep: :farmer:

Title: Re: The cost of keeping pigs
Post by: HappyHippy on November 15, 2012, 04:41:36 pm

Quote from: Womble on November 15, 2012, 03:22:16 pm

Ouch!

We were thinking about getting some weaners next year, but I have to say I'm thinking again now!  Adding up some of the figures mentioned above gives:

2 weaners    100
2x 400kg [email protected] per 25kg    264
Pig ark materials    50
Fencing upgrades    50
Slaughter & Cutting @ 25 each    50
total:    514

So if each pig were to yield 48kg of prime cuts (from Dan's link), you'd need to price that at a bit over £5.00 per kg to break even.  Given that Tescos joint prices (the easiest I could find) range from £3.50 to £10 per kg, it's clear this isn't going to make any return in price terms (though I hope it would in terms of welfare and taste of course).

Oh dear! Decisions, decisions!!  :pig: ;D

I spot an error David  ;)
You've got 2 x 400 Kg - it would be 400lbs, or approx 180 Kg for each pig  ;)
Halved your costs right away  ;D :thumbsup:
 
*Whispers* another way to raise them cheaper is to go for Kunekunes  :innocent:

Title: Re: The cost of keeping pigs
Post by: kja on November 15, 2012, 07:04:12 pm

Quote from: Dan on November 14, 2012, 10:30:08 am

Quote from: hughesy on November 13, 2012, 09:39:06 pm

Can't believe no one's mentioned feed! Even if you only rear a couple of weaners from 8 weeks to pork weight it's gonna make a big dent in your bank balance.

There's feed info on the page I linked to. We calculated our weaners took about 400Kg of feed each from 8 wks to slaughter weight.

i think the 400kg came from here  :innocent:

Title: Re: The cost of keeping pigs
Post by: MAK on November 15, 2012, 07:21:11 pm

This is complicated - too many variables. Cost will differ depending on ones' set up.
One thing that strikes me is the feeding regieme frequentley used to get pigs to slaughter. Why the rush and thus heavy reliance on expensive feed?
I guess if you do not have the land or time to cook spuds and root veg, collect fruit and nuts or have mates who can give you brewers grains or dairy waste then you need to buy grains.
I would not keep pigs if all I could feed them on was factory produced nuts. I can buy pork fed on these pellets from the supermerkets. It is so cheap here too.
To my mind there are 2 points to consider 1. Economics 2. Quality of home reared pork and pleasure of looking after the animals.
Others have already said on other threads that the economics do not stack up unless you have a good economy of sale and can sell your product at a good price. 

Title: Re: The cost of keeping pigs
Post by: Womble on November 15, 2012, 10:04:37 pm

 
Hi guys,

Sorry for the comparison with Tescos. It was just the quickest source I could think of for pork prices.
 
We can't keep one weaner for welfare reasons, and it'll take ages for us to chomp our way through two of them. So, whilst I have no problem with paying a bit more for a quality product for ourselves to eat, I'm not so keen on subsidising any meat that we would have to sell to others.
 
It was the same thing with the turkeys and broiler chooks last year - worth the effort for ourselves, but the cost in time and money didn't justify the financial return for the ones we sold to friends. For poultry, the answer's simple - only rear what you want to eat yourself. However, for pigs it's not quite so simple!!   
 
Given that we have plenty of grass here, I'm thinking of putting the pigs on hold for another year, buying Kune meat from Happyhippy to keep us going  :thumbsup: , and getting some sheep instead, in the spring!!

Title: Re: The cost of keeping pigs
Post by: PigsEatWeeds on November 16, 2012, 09:43:33 am

Thank you for all your responses. They are really helping me.

I am looking at keeping pigs for conservation grazing, as well as for as source of meat, so they will always have access to lots of forage. Does this mean that I can reduce the amount of supplementary feed I need to buy? Or are their any welfare restrictions on keeping them, almost entirely, on naturally foraged feed?

Title: Re: The cost of keeping pigs
Post by: hughesy on November 16, 2012, 10:35:18 am

Not sure what you mean by conservation grazing but in my experience neither of those things are what pigs do. Rooting, digging, ploughing yes, but not conservation or grazing.

Title: Re: The cost of keeping pigs
Post by: kja on November 16, 2012, 10:41:52 am

Quote from: hughesy on November 16, 2012, 10:35:18 am

Not sure what you mean by conservation grazing but in my experience neither of those things are what pigs do. Rooting, digging, ploughing yes, but not conservation or grazing.

a few out there doing it

www.grazinganimalsproject.org.uk/breed_profiles_handbook.html? (http://www.grazinganimalsproject.org.uk/breed_profiles_handbook.html?)

www.knepp.co.uk/pages/conservation/grazing_animals.asp (http://www.knepp.co.uk/pages/conservation/grazing_animals.asp)

Title: Re: The cost of keeping pigs
Post by: PigsEatWeeds on November 16, 2012, 11:49:46 am

That was a bit vague, sorry! It will be using their rooting behaviour to reduce bracken cover, possibly on large moorland and heathland sites, so they will have access to large areas, with lots of food.

Title: Re: The cost of keeping pigs
Post by: hughesy on November 16, 2012, 12:39:04 pm

I would think that traditional breed pigs would do well in a situation like that as it would suit their natural behaviour. Probably still need some feeding though especially if you have pregnant sows or sows with a litter. The pigs would need a lot of space to forage to avoid the whole area being rooted up but to some extent you could control the damage by varying the amount of space they have and/or the number of pigs in any given space.

Title: Re: The cost of keeping pigs
Post by: Canadian Sheepfarmer on November 16, 2012, 03:08:25 pm

Traditionally there are a lot of pigs here in Manitoba. Canadian bacon is well regarded in the USA, indeed Canada is synonymous with bacon in the minds of many Americans!
But in the last few years the industry has taken a real hit largely through rising feed prices, and many barns have closed, too often involving horrible neglect which does no one any good and further blackens the industry.
 
But I know of one producer who makes money with outdoor Berkshires. He has about 1200 acres and the 80 sows move around with sheep and cattle. The whole property is ringed with a 7 strand electric fence with a 36 joule fencer. There are no buildings. In the winter the pigs are provided with 2000 lb round straw bales. They burrow into these and make dens. We do not get any rain in the winter, the precipitation falls as snow, and it is a very dry cold.  I myself, doubting that the pigs were warm enough, burrowed into one of their straw piles, it was surprisingly toasty.
 
They farrow once a year in June. It is impossible to get near them at this time as the sows will literally have your leg off.  :o  So nature has to take its course. They seem to raise about 8 piglets per litter. Now Hutterite colonies regularly get 32 piglets a year from each sow, so the production is low. But the costs are very small. The piglets are very healthy, either fit or dead I suppose. They do graze, and they eat many things that you wouldn't think a pig would eat, true omnivores.
 
They are fed on screenings, the cheapest form of pelleted grain available. This is basically weed seeds and foreign grains that grain elevators extract from wheat etc in the cleaning and screening process.
 
The piglets are killed at the end of the year and sold into the city as pasture finished pork. In a box scheme.
It is very healthy and tasty product.
As I say, this man continues to quietly make money with pigs whilst a lot of the mega barns are in crisis.

Title: Re: The cost of keeping pigs
Post by: CaroleBulmer on November 16, 2012, 03:43:47 pm

Is KuneKune pork fat at all?  I have never eaten it but have freinds who we would be able to obtain piglets from in the future if we feel the need, however, we prefer our pork on the lean side and have always been led to believe that this breed runs to fat.

Title: Re: The cost of keeping pigs
Post by: HappyHippy on November 16, 2012, 04:09:30 pm

Quote from: CaroleBulmer on November 16, 2012, 03:43:47 pm

Is KuneKune pork fat at all?  I have never eaten it but have freinds who we would be able to obtain piglets from in the future if we feel the need, however, we prefer our pork on the lean side and have always been led to believe that this breed runs to fat.

They'll get fat - if you let them  ;)
We raise ours on 1lb of pig feed per day (split into 2 feeds) they graze when the grass is good and get hay/hayledge when it's not (or if they're inside) They generally go at around 10 months (75Kg liveweight) and I don't find ours overfat at all  :thumbsup:
But we have seen some very fat Kunekunes (we even bought a couple thinking we could slim them down  ::) doesn't work  :innocent:) but if you don't let them get fat in the first place it's not a problem. The pork is great  :yum:
HTH

Title: Re: The cost of keeping pigs
Post by: artscott on November 17, 2012, 11:18:26 pm

Thought I would put our cost down for the two we raised this year.  Was the first time with pigs and it was really good keeping them.  The meat is absolutely delicious, I don't think we could got back to the supermarket stuff now.
I didn't do any bacon yet as I have been busy working on our ramshackle house but have saved some cheeks and belly to make some when I have time.


 

04 April 2012 Pig Ark, second hand £200.00 10th April 2012 Electric fence kit, plus some wooden posts £96.00 20 April 2012 2 pedigree Tamworth Pigs ar 8 weeks £100.00 20 April 2012 local shop feed 3 sacks 20kg @ £8.50 £25.50 20 May 2012 2 sacks Farmgate (from bulk buy friend) 20Kg @ £7.08 £14.16 22 May 2012 10 sacks Farmgate (from bulk buy friend) 20Kg @ £7.08 £70.80 08 July 2012 10 sacks Farmgate (from bulk buy friend) 20Kg @ £7.08 £70.80 15 August 2012 3 sacks Farmgate (from bulk buy friend) 20Kg @ £7.08 £21.24 06 September 2012 transport Diesel + trailer loan £10.00 06 September 2012 Scotch premier slaughter costs £65.30 13 September 2012 West End butchers butchery costs £60.00 September grass seed for paddock reseed £15.00 total cost two pigs £748.80 Approx 120 kg meat Cost per KG (inc housing & fence, that will be used next year) £6.24 Leg, shoulder, sausages, chops, mince

Title: Re: The cost of keeping pigs
Post by: hexhammeasure on November 18, 2012, 12:22:19 am

It all very well to say you spent all that but you forgot to add back in the items you still have left over.. ie pig ark and fencing so £296 stock is still owned say 20% depreciation  leaves £236 ish subtract that from your costs and your meat value is reduced to £4.27 per kilo

Title: Re: The cost of keeping pigs
Post by: rispainfarm on November 19, 2012, 09:28:34 pm

pigs eat weeds, type in google isle of islay and pigs and cloe randall, spelt wrong on both names but google should pick it up. She has written papers on managing forests and moorland using pigs.