The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Livestock => Pigs => Topic started by: Fowlman on January 16, 2014, 07:35:17 pm
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I feed mine rolled barley along with there nuts to try and keep costs down but recently i spoke to someone who feeds just rolled barley to there weaners from start to finish. She buys in a tonne and apparently that does four weaners. Anyone else doing something similar ? Just a bit worried about laying on too much fat.
Mine get 75% pig nuts 25% rolled barley plus veg/fruit etc.
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I feed pellets until a month before slaughter, then gradually add in soaked, milled barley and wheat until it's half the feed amount. I'd be concerned about the vitamin and mineral content of a barley-only diet.
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I agree i think i will carry on as i'm doing but always interesting to hear others thoughts on the matter.
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I've fed barley in the past and ended up with overly fat pigs.
Pietrains are very lean pigs and of recent, I've been wondering whether or not you could get away with feeding pietrain crosses with barley.
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We have just got a tonne of bruised barley for £50, so this is interesting! We only got it two days ago, and at the moment have just swapped a handful of the nuts for barley.
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i found we ended up with too much fat cover after feeding a lot of barley and or oats. It may be that they were fed too much though as it's difficult to guage the amount to give them compared to pellets.
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I once did a deal which ended up with me getting two Tamworth x GOS weaners in lieu of petrol money. I reared them using barley and cooked potatoes. To look at, they didn't look overly fat but when they went for slaughter they turned out to be the fattest pigs that I've ever raised. I sold a half pig to one of my neighbours who for some reason still raves about that pork to this day. How he ever found any meat to amongst the fat to rave about is beyond me. :roflanim:
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We have fed our 6 pigs bought from a local farm (we are in France) and 2x corsican cross wild bore on a daily 12kg rolled barley soaked..,8kg soaked and cooked maize.. ,5/6 kg, chopped and softened cooked apples and 4 kg pig nuts 14% protien.. eggs once a week and a wheelbarrow of Kale now and again courtsey of farmer next door i just collect what he misses !! hard work but free....pigs started at about 16kg now 11 weeks later they are between 65 and 80kg each.....corsican/bore 15/18kg each slow growers !!........... i have tried to balance the food for nutrition and they look well now im a bit worried they will be fatty from the barley..... they call it Farine d'orge over here and im told used alot in commercial pig / cattle farms.... it was less the amount fed to start with but these guys demolish this in 15/20 mins... as its vertually vegi diet i give them more than the 4/5 lb..
????? what do you think???
i will be slaughtering the 2 biggest Saturday Fingers crossed
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Good luck with them greedyasapig.
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cheers will post Sunday on the FAT!!!
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Rough rule of thumb for the amount of feed (irrespective of content) is weaners should finish it off in 20 minutes, fully mature pigs in 10. In between you step it up according to age.
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Slaughtered 2 of the 6 big whites today.... not sure breed as from french pig farm 3 months ago.
All was well with"" barley any Fat on them"" !!... yes they are only 6 months old but the Barley did us good.... and at 180Euro a tonne it was a good investment and it was crushed so we just soaked it!! as a 30% mixed diet with other goodies and nuts i will be using again..
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I wonder how the other whole grains that are available compare with barley? If you read the old books on pigs, they're using by-products from the milling industry that you never hear of these days. All rather confusing.
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Hi guys ! Is your barley propped or not ?
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Propped Kelly? I don't even know what that means.
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The farmers up here leave the barley damp and spray it with acidic based spray( cant remember the name ) Apparently it keeps longer ? They have been feeding their stock with it for years. Smells a bit like vinegar. :thinking:
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this is really interesting on what other people do I fed my weaners sow and weaner nuts until slaughter but some times even they have to much fat I was going to ask if a growers pellet would be better but may be its trial and error
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If they get too fat on sow & weaner nuts they may need less feed as they mature. As a general rule of thumb weaners should finish off their feed in 20 minutes, gradually reducing to 10 minutes up to slaughter age.
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ok so maybe the 1lb of food per month of age is to much I will cut that down a bit and see how they are ,they do clear there food normally pretty quick
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propcorn is the name of that preservative it cheaper than drying grain. think it may be ok just on animal feed
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Hi we had 5 British lops from 6- 8weeks old. They arrived on nuts but came with a stomach bug and had to have 2 courses of antibiotics and in desperate to keep them going were feeding glucose water. After 4 weeks of treatments and nursing we move them out to ½ acre of grazing. Fed along with weaner nuts. 4 pig were fine on the diet but 1 soon started to look poor and was not eating. After a visit from the vet and with the “you have done everything you can for it” ringing our ears my Mum turned back to the glucose water. Desperate to get something solid into her, Quaker oats from the kitchen was mixed into the water. Dad then got rolled barley for her. She ate this without problem, adding back in the nuts, she refuse the nuts even mixed with barley and picked them out of the trough and was poor again. It stayed on barley for the rest of the time, the other 4, still on nuts, were feed a mixed of the two (50/50). Having all had a bad start they killed out at 30 & 32 weeks from 75kg to 58kg the lightest being the barley only. She lost 6-8 weeks in illness and was the smallest piglet, I don’t think they did badly. They have made fantastic pork, not carrying much fat but enough for great crackling and bacon.
This year we are going to do a mix of nuts and barley plus greens from the veg garden etc.
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I slaughtered another 2 at the weekend and these pigs were fabulous nice n lean meat Rolled barley for me..
Best pigs ive done so far and 1st time on the BARLEY.. nice and cost effective too....
Looking forward to a nice rolled sirloin Sunday.... :P
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what amount of barley did you feed them daily
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As per post 7...
8 pigs got 12kg soaked barley... 6/8kg soaked and cooked Maize, cooked apples aprox 6kg plus...... 3/4 kg nuts to share... so i would guess 3.5 pound of barley each as 2 of the pigs are corsican X wild bore and they dont eat half as much as the 6 commercial breed. .1kg maize 1kg apples and 0.5kg nuts..and some kale as much as i give them... 1 litre of milk between them.per day. and hay also which was plentyful this year.. a few bales (7 kg) each a week to munch..
Quite alot but a very veggi diet and worked well... from 16kg aprox to 65/80kg in 12 weeks well pleased cost in feed per pig 60 euro each including gas for cooking Maize and apples.... i cooked the apples as they seemed bored after 6 weeks of feeding them warm with maize they demolished em asap....... Kale is free i just collect non cut from field with farmers permission and 700kg apples also free and collected locally.
So roughly 30% of feed....