The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Livestock => Pigs => Topic started by: gracy on June 01, 2016, 08:09:15 am
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Hi I have pigs on pasture I try to suplement their grazing with a barley mineral mix (bought in from a local farmer who is licenced to mix feed) as I am concerned about lysazine etc. but the buggers only eat about 100g a day!
They are grading well so just fussy. I was thinking of offering milk but I know that you need to be licenced for that. Has anyone here been through the process (in scotland) and can you tell me what is required to become licenced to feed milk???
I don't want to start something I cant finish.....
Ta
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As far as I'm aware, you can only feed milk produced on the same holding, we have goats and feed some excess milk to pigs from our own holding. I may be wrong, I haven't delved deeper as I have milk production on my own holding.
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wouldnt barley and whey be a better option? They pile the growth and weight on with that. Also cheesemakers want to give it away because of the vast amounts of it, so it might be better in the long run and the pigs love it! :)
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Yes if your giving milk off your holding you don't need a licence but i don't have any dairy animals
in scotland you can feed
"milk, milk products and white water when suitably treated"
providing
"anyone obtaining the above to feed their pigs would need to be registered for this purpose unless the milk product contained less than 80% milk. please contact your local Animal Health office."
Basicaly I could in theory feed the piggies on pasturised milk bought from mr tescos as long as it was in date. (And I was registered)
Oh it would be nice to have free whey but i live 200 miles away from my nearest dairy!
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If your pigs are grading well why would you change your feeding regime? What sort of pigs do you have and what weights are you killing at. Milk and milk products make your meat pale and I think it also smells of milk if you feed too much. You would need somewhere cold to store in this weather. Barley generally lays down fat but if you are mainly giving them grass then I would think they will be lean.
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I've just been getting a lot of flack recently about the pigs not getting a balanced meal. And now I'm worrying. I chose Barley as it has more lysasine than oats and wheet doesn't grow up here so v expensine (Barley = £35 per 1/4 tone Wheet =£9/20kg ! ) I keep being told to put them on milk for the amino acids but then again these are also the farmers that stopped keeping pigs when "the red tape became to much". If these weren't my first pigs I'd happily tell them times have changed etc but.....
They are Large Blacks x GOC x Duroc and I'm aiming at no more than 95kg (abattoir charges extra for big hogs) will kill them at 6 months and find out how big they got. :pig:
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If it's a licence, it may be like the licence for animal by products (eg. Sheep skins) which was a simple form, they check where you will keep them and that you are keeping the right paperwork.
Probably easiest to give the animal health office a ring and they'll be able to tell you exactly what would be required.
It sounds like if they're healthy and growing well, the diet can't be that bad!
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btw, pigs will slurp up milk even if it has gone off, as long as it is raw and simply gone sour.
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commercial farmers wouldnt be used to traditional breeds but do have a wealth of experience.
have you considered pignuts? takes the worry away.
once you see the butchered meat, you will learn heaps.
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What did you mean by "grading well" if you haven't took any in yet? How old are they now? Pigs wouldn't get all they needed from grass. In the wild they would eat meat too. If your barley has minerals added then can you ask what minerals and amounts. Does the farmer mix differently for different animals? You could add a mineral or something like seaweed. If you think they look OK and are growing then I wouldn't worry. The biggest mistake people make is to fatten their pigs when they should be thinking finished.
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I have a lot of whey from the goats cheese and waste milk from the cows and the goats First milk ect
and have been told by animal health not to feed it to the pigs its not worth all the paper work
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Thanks everybody. Pigs don't eat enough solid food (ie what I put out) to be worth buying in pig nuts (£11/20kg). They original idea was to range them to keep them trim (both my husband and I cant stand fatty meat) Didn't realise how much grazing would impact on food intake though, we were expecting 80%pig food 20% grazing but its the other way around. (not that I'm complaining just concerned)
They are 4 months now and by grading I mean 3 on the newcastle scale (firm pressure with flat of hand required before bones felt) number 4 (firm presure with fingertips required) is obese and 2 (bones felt with light presure) is underweight.
yes he does one mix for cows and another for pigs. He suplies beef for tescos finest range so i am confident he knows what he is doing. It was the fact that i seem to be throwing so much away i was woried they arnt geting enough in. I used to put out 1kg per pig I am now down to 300g per pig and still most of it is left. they have seperate buckets and i watch they closely at feading no-one misses out they just seem to get bored after 7 minuets and go back to roaming, i have even left the buckets out all day and the next morning they were still half full. I wormed them incase that was the problem but no change.
just lately I have found small bones in their poo and more than once these past few weeks I have seen one or the other being mobbed by birds maybe they have been snacking on frogs and chicks.... :yum:
think looking at these posts I'll give the milk a miss thanks everybody
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Pigs don't eat enough solid food (ie what I put out) to be worth buying in pig nuts (£11/20kg). They original idea was to range them to keep them trim (both my husband and I cant stand fatty meat) Didn't realise how much grazing would impact on food intake though, we were expecting 80%pig food 20% grazing but its the other way around. (not that I'm complaining just concerned)
I am surprised that they don't eat up the feed as I wouldn't expect them to be satisfied on grass but if they are doing fine then they must be. I would expect that no matter how much grass they ate they would still eat up their hard feed. It would be interesting to see if they ate up pig nuts. I would be really interested to know if you can get them to 95 kilo's by six months.
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Will let you know how it goes if its any guide they were about 30 kg when we wormed them last week. Don't know if that's good or bad for 4 months???
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I would say that they are on the small side and certainly not going to get to 95 kilo's by six months if that is when you want to send them.
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When we used to buy in GOS weaners we paid by the kilo and they were usually between 19 and 23 kg at 8 weeks. You have to build the frame first with 16% protein feed, then the flesh gets put on that. Supermarket sausages (whatever fancy name they give them) are rubbish compared to native breed, traditionally raised and finished pork. At 4 months their food conversion rate is slowing appreciably and they'll start to put on fat rather than grow frame. Given lots of interesting things to eat growers will go for variety, a bit like a child given the run of a sweetshop, even though boring old 16% protein nuts are what's best for them.
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As MF says the best conversion of food takes place when the pigs are younger. Both GOS and LB have the potential to be fatty but your infusion of Duroc might well counter this.
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I have a lot of whey from the goats cheese and waste milk from the cows and the goats First milk ect
and have been told by animal health not to feed it to the pigs its not worth all the paper work
Is this in Scotland Goatherd?
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Thanks everybody. They were only 8 kg when we got them @8 weeks which is a a gain of around 12kg a month.... I thought they would balloon towards the end.....if their rate of growth is about to slow down i may be in for some very light piggys :-\ Can't delay their slaughter as working on contract over winter and our farm sitter "don't do pigs" ::) I knew 95kg sounded a bit to much like pie in the sky.
Are durocs a lighter breed? They all look like LB from a distance. (the mix is 50%LB 25%durroc 25%GOS)
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Just to update.
The pigs finished out between 65 and 73 kg DW with the average at 69kg DW.
Not too fatty averaging 80mm except for one who was 130 mm! The meat is very sweet. Butcher did comment that the hams were unusually small.
The pasture was Rough grazing with patches of bog I'd say 60% grass (timothy, fescue and sedge) 10% Juncus rushes (they loved the tubers) 10% heather/crowberry (ate berries, flowers and young shoots) 20% spagnum moss (they didn't eat this but loved playing with it and it hosted lots of yummy insects/amphibians)
After restricting them to 1/3 acre per pig they started eating 1kg barley a day.
Total feed given between 8 weeks and 24 weeks - 82kg/pig
Total feed cost/pig £12.75 !
Next time i will probably start them on the smaller space and I will be planting field peas in the finishing field to give them a little protein boost. Me thinks they would have filled out a bit better if they had had the extra solids from the get go.