The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Livestock => Pigs => Topic started by: earlybird on October 02, 2012, 11:41:59 am
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has anyone fed wheat to their pigs, i know you can feed barley after it has gone through a rolling or crushing mill , i have access to a large amount of grain, great for my poultry , and was wondering if i could suppliment some of my normal sow and weaner nuts with the odd feed of wheat, dont want to do it until i know one way or other incase i bung them up or give them bloat
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Unless it's rolled it'll go straight through, undigested as I discovered :innocent:
Probably better to stick to giving it to the chooks and look to something else for the pigs ;)
Fodder beet, sugar beet, cooked potatoes - these would be a better choice for them IMHO.
Hope that helps,
Karen :wave:
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* cooked potatoes - done outside and not in your kitchen obviously :thumbsup:
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pigs will eat wheat if it has been ground up we roll barley (for the cattle) but the wheat is ground almost to flour, its ok as a filler but it needs pig minerals if your going to feed on it, the only trouble with adding straights is you un balance the balanced pig nuts.
barley = fattner
wheat = filler
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If you can coarsly grind or lightly roll it definatley feed it, wheat has a higher crude protein and lysine % than corn, certainly dont treat it as a filler.
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wheat also has more energy then barley
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If you can coarsly grind or lightly roll it definatley feed it, wheat has a higher crude protein and lysine % than corn, certainly dont treat it as a filler.
around here a filler is anything you add to feed to bulk out feed fillers could be fruit veg etc etc.
from years of fattening pigs and trying every angle to cut costs the pigs with the most back fat 2" were barley fed the ones on wheat (same quantity) half the fat. we usually only feed wheat to the fatteners the breeding stock may get a handful here and there if they go off the usual feed around farrowing.
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Chickenfeed, the reason why I said dont treat it as a filler is because normally fillers for bulking up feed have little to no nutritional value and are purley there to satisfy appetite and save costs.
Wheat is normally more expensive than corn/maize but as earlybird has access to wheat grain, I thought he should try and get the maximum benefit from it and not think that there is no value in it.
Barley= fatner
Wheat= muscle
Also dont grind to a flour as it is not pallatable, try putting a teaspoon of flour in your mouth and see what happens, it is like trying to eat bread dough, same for the pigs, you just need to crack the kernnel in order for them to digest, instead of passing straight through them like HappyHippy said.
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Chickenfeed, the reason why I said dont treat it as a filler is because normally fillers for bulking up feed have little to no nutritional value and are purley there to satisfy appetite and save costs.
Wheat is normally more expensive than corn/maize but as earlybird has access to wheat grain, I thought he should try and get the maximum benefit from it and not think that there is no value in it.
Barley= fatner
Wheat= muscle
we always add pig minerals if feeding fattners wheat without the added minerals they dont seem to do so good.pigs will always do better on a brought in ready mixed ration imo and in the long run the price is balanced out in finishing times.
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Also dont grind to a flour as it is not pallatable, try putting a teaspoon of flour in your mouth and see what happens, it is like trying to eat bread dough, same for the pigs, you just need to crack the kernnel in order for them to digest, instead of passing straight through them like HappyHippy said.
i said almost like a flour for anyone that feeds sow and weaner meal that is the mix your looking for much easier to digest than cracked or rolled, everyone i know that mills their own straights mills pig feed down to this dust as did my parents for their commercial pig herd 20 odd years back time tested in my experience works for me as it did them so if it works i will stick with it.
btw i was once told by a old pig farmer that feeding pigs rolled barley or wheat caused stomach ulcers another reason why i stick to dust.
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Chickenfeed thats great if it works for you by all means stick to it.
The cause of ulcers in pigs can be related to a number of factors, one of which is food particle size, the finer the particle size the greater the chances are of ulcers.
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Chickenfeed thats great if it works for you by all means stick to it.
The cause of ulcers in pigs can be related to a number of factors, one of which is food particle size, the finer the particle size the greater the chances are of ulcers.
it works for us and it must work for the feed suppliers as i said the sow and weaner meal is a very fine dust i have not seen any baged pig feed rolled or cracked its either dust or nuts so they cant all be wrong i will stick to dust for pigs rolled for the cattle.
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Back to this old argument, home mixed verses bought in feed. I am supportive of chickenfeed with this, if anyone cares to look at their feed bag label it will tell you the contents and the percentage that each component has. Fine pellets has to be milled finer too go through the caking process, course nuts or cubes does not require the same finish as it is not prone to blocking off the machinery. A simple test can be done for all the doubting thomass. If you break up one of the fine pencils and break up one of the large nuts or cubes, it is plane to see the difference in the grinding.
Wheat is harder than barley or oats and has to be processed through a hammer mill. I personally have never fed wheat as a straight feed and according to my other half, it would knock hell out a bruiser or roller mill. Barley and Oats can both go through a bruiser or roller mill and can be fed as a straight feed or Incorporated.
Some of the comments on here had my other half in kinks of laughter, anyway with any feed you have to observe the dung and even wheat that has only been cracked or cut in half passes through undigested, it has to be milled.
I can see where everyone is trying to economise with there feed and believe me we have tried every avenue possible and you cannot detract from the fact that purchased feed is the most economic feed there is and the most productive for producing pork. With any grain you have to buy it and if it is cheap it is for a reason, either contaminated with rat urine or other nasties or is just husks with no feed value what so ever. You then have to mill it and mix it and also have approval for mixing (certificate from EH) then store so consider all your time involved and poor growth rates of your pigs, I for one will stick to proper manufactured pig feed. Incidently we feed draff, a by product of the brewing industry and the husks are not digested. Each to there own as they say but we have tried all different ways of feeding and processing and always keep coming back to proper pig feed.
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Earlybird, there are a number of articles on the web ,which may be of use to you, one been http://www.pork.org/filelibrary/AnimalScience/Alt_Feed_2.pdf (http://www.pork.org/filelibrary/AnimalScience/Alt_Feed_2.pdf)
In hindsight I should of maybe gone into more detail and asked 100 questions before giving any answer, however I did not want to treat anyone as a fool and made certain assumptions that one would take advice and research it further to ensure that it fits in with what you want to achieve and still makes economic sense.
We all know that there is no single feed that is completly balanced and therefore feeding alone will not give you the desired results, however and here are a couple of my assumptions, that you are getting the grain for free or at a very good price, that you are intellegent enough to not feed contaminated feed to your animals and that you either choose to do things strictly according to the rules or not and the latter is not for me to judge you on.
I am from South Africa so some of the regulations you have either don't exsit here or are not inforce yet.
One being mixing of feed on farm, which I have been doing this for the past 8 years, but I am fortunate enough to have free access to a diatecian as well as a number of feed sources and have never had any feed associated problems, so I will continue to mix feed irrespective of the law.
I am always looking at ways to improve the efficiency of what I do, even in the good times so that when the bad times come I don't have to play catch up, so I tend to read more and laugh less.
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thanks for that riversdale, we have inherited the father in laws big 3 phase milling machine with different size milling drums so will have a practice with the different drums to get the right texture, web site said that the grain wants spliting down to 4 or 5 times not too fine, we are thinking of replacing one quater of the ready mixed feed with the wheat, it was also interesting about sprouting the wheat, growing the wheatgrass to feed them as well, was going to do this for the chucks and goats as well to fill in the non grass stage of winter hopefully got nothing to loose trying. ta
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Neighbours of ours feeds wheat as part of their pigs' diet (part pellets, part wheat and beans, and fruit & veg when available), but soaks the wheat the day before feeding it to improve digestion instead of rolling or cracking it. Anybody who had advice on this? It seems to work as his pigs always grow well without being too fat (he only fattens some in the summer, there's no breeding stock).
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Whole wheat can be fed to pigs , but you need to soak it in water for at least 24hrs first. Good cheap feed.
rgds George.
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thanks everyone :wave: