The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Livestock => Pigs => Topic started by: PigManDan on December 30, 2012, 06:01:09 am
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Hello all,
New to the forum, although I have been reading here and there for years
I've finally decided to make a change. I currently like and work in Victoria, Australia. I have been here for 3 years with my wife and 2 children. I have always been invloved with pigs. We had a 250 sow PIC breeder unit in Burford, Oxfordshire when I was a kid and we also had a 250 sow indoor farrow to finish unit in Middlesbrough in the family up until about 6 years ago.
I am currently the production manager for a 3000 sow farrow to finish unit using PIC C29's to produce very large quantities of supermarket outdoor bred pork.
I've got it in my head that I want to run a herd of Tamworth pigs, selling my own meat on hopfully a large scale. My wife is even looking into becoming a butcher so she can handle all our meat after slaughter. No need to say I fear my wife at the best of times, but her being trained with a knife really does make me want to sleep with both eyes open! I think the pork produced from the Tamworth is fantastic, and should be avalible to everyone! Some people know what they are missing out on but just do not have the space or time to produce them for personal consumption. I want to be able to fill this void.
So my search for land started about 6 months ago, and I cant find any anywhere! I really want to be in southern England, but have no problem in farming up in my native north east.
I want to start out with 2 boars 10 sows, 10 gilts and a batch of weaners (10 - 15) with the view of selecting at least 5 of these for future breeders.
I'm so excited about this and really cannot hide my passion for pigs and producing high quality meat.
What are your thoughts on my idea and is there anyone out there who would consider pointing me in the direction of some land!
Thanks
Dan
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Hi, dan
Don't know anything about pigs and live in chilly, wet and windy Scotland so of no use whatsoever to you, just saying welcome and good morning
Mojo
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Scotland could be a possibility, the Tamworth does well in Canada and im damn sure its gets colder there than up in wee Scotland!
Thanks for the welcome
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If you go for Scotland you might want drier (normally!) eastern side than west - cos altho Canada gets colder, it is a kinder dry cold than the wetter parts of Scotland which is the wet cold combination animals dont like - in the eastern side it is more the dryer colder type which they find easier (and easier on the ground too).
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Thanks for that, never been up to Scotland, even though when I was in Middlesbrough I was no more than 2 hours away!
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My farm is up for sale as we want to expand our rare breeds! Includes an ex small-scale commercial pig unit of 6 large sties with run, water and power + 10-stall farrowing shed. PM me for further details
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Best of luck with your plan, Dan :thumbsup:
I have loved pigs since I first worked with them on an intensive unit in the 80s. Finally achieved my goal of having free range pigs of my own three years ago - and can confirm that the wet cold weather in these parts (I'm far NW of England, north of Hadrian's Wall and about 20 miles south of the Scottish Border) is not nice for pigs. You need good winter accommodation for them, especially any youngstock. To my surprise, my Saddleback x weaners wintered indoors very very happily last winter - they had a large pen with a big round bale of hay to burrow into (not planned, it just happened that way and they loved it so much we left it there for them - they had just about used it all up by the end of the winter ;D) The pen was at the entrance to the cattle shed, so there were people coming and going a lot; they enjoyed the interaction and always seemed completely content. This year I don't have homebred youngstock, and my two bought-in Large Blacks do not like being indoors - get bored and fiesty - but get cold if it's too wet and cold outside, even with a good shelter and lots of dry straw. So I have had to juggle giving them outside time but bringing them in before they get too cold. Their outside pen has been a swamp for a good week now, so yesterday I gave them the run of an old hen run, currently unused, for a few hours. Happy sleepy pigs last night when they came back in - but there's not enough grass in there to keep them going for very long. If the ground doesn't dry up a bit I shall have to resort to taking them for daily walks!
I've had to open up another part of the field for the adult pigs - it's no fun plodging up to your belly in mud, Meg-pig tells me, especially when there are wee stones buried in the mud that go up between your cleats and hurt your feet when you walk. Bless 'em, they set off to 'work' in the far end of the field each morning after breakfast, returning tired and happy at tea-time. :D
My pigs are just a hobby and for food for us and family and friends - no way could I do real free range properly here without a lot of thought and a huge amount of ground to allow for rotation.
Tammies would be very hardy, probably even more so than my OSB Meg-pig, but I would certainly be looking towards the drier parts of the country for a free range setup.
Best of luck! :thumbsup:
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I'd be thinking about where I was going to sell all that meat to first. Could get very expensive with that many pigs and you'd ultimately need a big buyer to take the bulk of your production. Then you'd be getting into the supermarket vs the loss making pig farmer arena which doesn't sound like much fun to me.
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I'd look at the Farmers Market/local deli/restaurant/pub trade. There is a market for rare breed pork: we had a call from a Berwickshire man who wanted to buy our free-range, mangalitza pork for his gastro-pubs. Trouble is, he wanted a pig a week and we just aren't scaled for that level of production. Our OSBs and mangalitzas do fine here in southeast Scotland: though none of them like the amount of mud around at the moment they all mooch around outside and chat with passers by. One other factor in choosing your location is the proximity of an abattoir that can handle your proposed volume of private kills. We now have to take our pigs to an abattoir 60 miles away, and the cost of the diesel is considerable :(
But go for it! Best of luck, and let us know how you get on!
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Tamworths are an excellent choice - but, then, I'm biased. As someone said earlier, they are incredibly hardy (mine only come in from farrowing time until weaning), but they can be housed over winter if necessary. Good luck with your plans. Liz
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You need to think carefully about your location in terms of facilities and potential market. This means considering such things as the location of a good quality smaller abattoir within reasonable distance. You talk about doing your own butchery so I guess you may thinking about on-line sales, farmers markets and even a Farm Shop in which case there's no point in locating yourself somewhere where there's only a small population or one where they are not renowned for paying a premium for quality produce.
In those circumstances I would back your plan to locate yourself somewhere in the southern half of the country where you are most likely to succeed in developing a specialist market for Tamworth pork. You obviously have all the know-how on the production side but do spend some time working up a credible business plan for how you are going to sell a niche market product in sufficient volume to make your business viable.
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I used to go our with the son of a pig farmer around charlesbury, His surname was Gosling but I think his mother had badger as a surname (yeah don't laught) they were pig farming in the 80's. have you heard of them as Burford is quite close I think from days at Oxford.
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Thanks Mr Pig, I was thinking of either Oxfordshire (maybe even team up with the argri business we used before when farming) or Ipswich area. Both are within a good distance of London where speciality meats will sell well. Also, Oxford is a great place to sell, and even the small villages like Burford and Eastleach just over the glouc border have scope for sales.
And sorry i've never heard of the Gordons or the Badgers, I was only born in 1986 myself!
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And sorry i've never heard of the Gordons or the Badgers, I was only born in 1986 myself!
:roflanim: oh well you wouldn't know them then :) Good luck with your pigs
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Hi Pigmandan, we live in the scottish borders and kept Tamworths. I'm going to sound dour here but I wouldn't choose to live in Scotland - it is beautiful, but the weather is dreadful generally - if I had my choice I would be south (or even abroad) somewhere a bit warmer which at least has a summer.
Tamworths are great looking and we loved ours but their killing time is later, at 9 months and although we fed our the best diet they could have (we were given loads of free fresh veg in return for meat) and their diet was controlled, their fat content was enormous compared to other pigs. Others we have known to keep them said the same thing.
I also like Oxford Sandy and Blacks and would be tempted to keep them, but would find out about their meat quality v fat content first.
Good luck with your enterprise - it's important to be excited of course, but control yourself and think financially too or it could all be a costly mistake and could lead to stress for you and your family.
all the best.
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I also like Oxford Sandy and Blacks and would be tempted to keep them, but would find out about their meat quality v fat content first.
My first pair were OSBs. I still have Meg-pig but we ate Gaby. Sent her off at 7 months, 60kg deadweight, 19mm back fat. Taste and succulence of meat the best we've had - mind it was that autumn where there were mountains of apples, she had plenty of them and her meat tastes ever so slightly of apples - sufficiently so that I never bother to make apple sauce when we're eating Gaby! :D
So on my very limited experience, I would say yes it's worth trying OSBs. Very hardy, very very nice pigs to handle, don't get too fat if you manage their feed - they don't need to go above 4lbs cake (or equivalent) and do not need a high protein feed. Tiva Diva can tell you a lot more, and with a considerable amount of experience ;)
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goose pimple hit the nail on the head .The cost of feed and diesel is the killer .Put the wether in that's 3 things that's bad most pig farms have gone in the last 12 months done cornwall wether good but sales dawn .So i dint no .I would bet that not 1 pig raised in Scotland has a prophet .The feed has doubled this Christmas pork was dawn .Morison's sold legs £10 my Friend Carnot beat that so he wont do pigs for Christmas again .Tesco sold beef cheap so imported food is still winning very hard situation.Christmas has changed pork was cheap up till december people dident wont cheap meat and they dident wont turkey ether .In scotland i would of said salmon beef turkey goose and remember im about at these christmas sales .
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PigmanDan ...hi there, I'm in Suffolk and I very thankful that we don't have the same weather troubles as elsewhere. The middle and north of the county, along with South Norfolk is where the big pig businesses are, largely due to the Breckland ground, which is part sandy and well draining. It's known as the triangle.
The downside of our area would be the cost of land. Probably not as pricey as Oxford area but as the vast majority of it is used by arable farmers and what is for sale tends to be very large acreage. There are small fields available, but these get quickly snapped up by horsey people who will pay over the odds for paddock land as there are restrictions in place about turning fields into land suitable for horses. We are also aware that land is often sold privately to neighgbouring farmers to add onto existing acreage (we tried to buy some a while back and got shafted this way, big time).
What the local estate agents are now doing is Getting a big field and dividing up. It makes money as small
parcels, particularly near to villages are not so easy to find.
The average acreage price on big parcels of land is about 7 grand For smaller bits ..... Well, I know that a couple of acres went for 25 recently :(
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Hi Dan
I live about 12miles south of Middlesbrough near Stokesley so know that area well and as Mr Pig alluded you need to aim for an affluent area if possible, the north is pretty grim at the mo on the job front and with the likes of george Bolams selling half pigs for £40-£50 its blooming hard work. i only hobby keeppigs and do pork 2 or 3 times a year to a select few. Market research tells me at the moment there just isn't the market for it round here.
I keep GOS by the way but a good dual purpose pig would be the saddleback, tammies are good for bacon so i understand.
anyway whatever you decide to do or wherever you decide to go, best of luck
Mandy :pig:
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Bolams selling half pigs for £40-£50 i dont think that eney small holder can beat this if its you re living it has to work most have the money and dont need to make a prophet and that's not farming .You have to break even but thats not good enough for some farms .
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Get a plan B. Get a second property preferably - a smaller house for you and family and put the rest on something you can get an income from - 'glamping' is getting big in Britain now - a glorified shed or caravan for glamorous camping - it brings in an income so when you have a bad year you have something to fall back on that isn't livestock based and the outlay isn't enormous. All farmers are looking at incomes from secondary sources especially after these past few years of dreadful weather. I wouldn't consider smallholding anywhere if we didn't have a source of other income, it's just too small a margin between holding out and ruin. Sorry to sound so bleak. Must be the weather (again), it may be an easier option where you are already or maybe try to keep some obscure ancient piggy or other livestock that you can sell for a lot of money as a sideline to something more commercial Dan. Sorry don't mean to burst your bubble, I have bubbles all the time and my OH usually makes me see sense ;)
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GOOD DAY GOOSEPIMPLE and Happy new ya re well i think we should PAC up and go to Spain or France i didn't work Christmas day but boxing day done 4 hour es and to day cleaned the yard and done a pen .So a new pen being built this week end .Have you had a rest ,Christmas day a wast of time would loved to of done some think .well winter still ha sent got going .I did say it would start the end of January which is 3 weeks away .I just hope things get better i still ha vent sold my lambs from last ya re ,price not good enough .
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Well we reared 3 OSBs t
In 2012 and sold the meat in boxes at £7 per kg and £9.60 per kg for joints so made a tidy profit plus a freezer crammed with meat. On a small scale if you can get a client base and quality product people will pay. I was embarrassed charging as much as we did but my ex had no problems asking for it and I had no complaints.
Would love to have more this this year but sadly need to find some suitable ground.
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That's a shame just when you wont to go for it
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Pigman perhaps have a look at farmland for sale or small holdings for sale in Wisbech / March North Cambridgeshire or Norfolk area to see what you can construct your dreams about .
You can always use google earth to see the geographic locations as to likley foot falls etc .
Perhaps look on line for local papers as well , to start finding land agents in areas your interested in etc.
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:wave:
I have often seen properties in the south of Lincolnshire too. It hasn't been too bad here (apart from the :raining: ). If you get the right area the soil is very fertile (and if you don't it's like rocky sand on solid rock, so guess what our first area was :roflanim: ).
Also, most of it is flat! ;)
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Wow guys, just got in from work with my 3000 piggys and find there have been a heap of replies through the day! Thank you all so much for putting down you're thoughts.
I'll give you all more of a broad view of what I want to do.
Farming run of the mill bacon pigs means it near impossible to make a profit, its all done through volume rather than profit per kg. I mean we wean over 1000 piglets a week and still dont make a heap of money as a business, and this is in Australia where fresh meat imports are banned, if you want to buy fresh pork it has to be Australian, thats the law. So even without the competition from imports its still hard to make a buck.
However, in the UK where imports are huge and can be very very cheap because of the production systems used in the rest of europe, all the million euro liquid feeding systems that make FCR fantastic. They do not however have the flavour of meat from Tamworths, OSB, GOS or any other rare breed pigs. So this is really where you have to create you're own market. If you were to compare a pork chop from a PIC line C29 mass market pork production pig to that of a rare breed pig there would be a clear winner. This is really where I want to make my market. I want to make people realise how much more flavoursome this product is compared to the pork we all accept as 'top quality'.
The problem is the cost, people may well know how much better the product is but they simply cannot afford to choose this meat over that of the cheaper more economical choice, especially in the current financial situation. So what I intend to do, through both low cost production methords and selective breeding to increase productivity of the sows is try and produce this rare breed meat for a cost close to that of the run of the mill pork. The main barrier to this of corse is the productivity of the sows. PIC, JSR or Keffen have bread these super productive animals to get the 13 and 14 PBA litters, producing more pigs using less sows. I think that its possible to get a rare breed animal, keep the bloodline pure yet still manage to breed producivity into the animal.
Look at the way PIC started, they took a batch of sows and recorded PBA, if the sow managed to have a littler of 12 perfect piglets twice in a row her piglets were selected as breeders, and so on the cycle continued. I think there is a possibility of doing this.
So to be able to bring fantastic, pure bloodline, rare breed pork to the market at a more competative price I think it will force people to re-think the age old dilema, quality over quantity.
This is a long long term project for me and I have been working towards it for many years, 10 years infact, when I was 16 and really got into the production side of pigs. So I have been saving to be able to support this 'pipe dream'
In th meantime I plan to do other things, as you have said in the comments to support the farm. We want to grow veg and do a pick your own kind of thing, the farmers markets for our pork and other value added products such as pies, sausage rolls and other dishes made from pork. There has been money made from educating todays children on what farming is. Running educational days on the farm, doing school visits with animals and so on. It breaks my heart to hear these stoires from teachers and community workers where young children are asked where things such as eggs, milk, cheese and meat come from and they answer they give is Tesco or Asda. My 4 year old son has more of an understanding of where his food comes from than some kids twice his age.
I cant thank you guys enough for the response my original post as got, I never thought I would meet so many people who are as passionate, if not more, about pigs than me!
You all need a pat on the back for keeping these rare breeds in our country and keeping the farming dream alive or so many others.
Maybe you can all come and work with me and we make it the biggest co-oprative business in the world! lol
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I expect I am being very thick, but I would be fascinated to know what PIC, line C29, JSR, Keffen, FCR and PBA mean - not abbreviations commonly seen on this forum. Have found this post very interesting but would love to understand properly what Pig Man Dan is talking about - Tamsaddle
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Sorry! got my commercial pig farming head on! I'll explain:
PIC are a gentic improvment company who supply bloodlines used in commercial breeding herds (there full name is Pig Improvment Company) the C29 is the Camborough 29, PIC's latest and greatest product. JSR and Keffen are the same, genetic improvers of commercial breeding pigs.
PBA is pigs born alive, as in now many live piglets per litter the sow has
FCR - feed conversion ratio - i.e how much food is needed in KG to gain 1KG of liveweight
Hope that explains it all okay?
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The problem is the cost, people may well know how much better the product is but they simply cannot afford to choose this meat over that of the cheaper more economical choice, especially in the current financial situation. So what I intend to do, through both low cost production methords and selective breeding to increase productivity of the sows is try and produce this rare breed meat for a cost close to that of the run of the mill pork
and so put the rest of us doing it small scale out of business! ::) ???
There is one farmer near me in Harrogate supplying GOS pork to M&S, he has 800 pedigree GOS sows, which is half the current GOS numbers in the UK, it will be very interesting to see how this venture progresses and if it is sustainable or if M&S decide to pull the plug!
Mandy :pig:
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A few years ago I worked for asda's main supplier of lamb. They were screwed at every turn by the supermarket and they had to pass this on to their farmer suppliers. The farmers had signed contracts to supply which they couldn't get out of so were forced to sell their lambs at a loss further into the contract when costs had changed etc. The company in question was totally dependent on asda so if they had lost the contract they would have gone bust. Who in their right mind would want to get into that kind of situation?
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Dan, my kids have just been on an educational farm trip - these are fantastic fun, our kids LOVED it, but it is done by farmers here on a voluntary basis periodically throughout the year, they do it very professionally but it is not profit making at all, all voluntary.
Reading your post it's easy to sense your passion and enthusiasm and I'm sure you are the type to work your socks off. Perhaps the best way forward is to avoid the supermarkets altogether and go for the local butcher in every high street - people still like to shop there. Or perhaps get your own shop - say open 3 shops so you start to get a name in other towns too. People love the butcher / deli / veg / wineshop thing - a nice shop where the quality is always excellent and its an uplifting experience - a place that isn't a supermarket.
You would have to start in the right sort of town to get your reputation (would cost more but be worth it for the reputation). A tiny cafe on the side always works too, people are always hungry and want a pork roll with apple sauce etc. You need to get right on the high street, like other posts have said, the supermarkets will eat you alive.
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Hi Dan,
It would be interesting to know if these people are represented on the forum but this website looks to be along the lines you are thinking of and appears to be working for them.
http://www.scottsfieldpork.co.uk/ (http://www.scottsfieldpork.co.uk/)
Pete
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Many thanks for the explanations PigManDan. Just what I needed - Tamsaddle
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http://www.scottsfieldpork.co.uk/ (http://www.scottsfieldpork.co.uk/)
Hmmm. After reading all about their "rare breed pork" it states on the next page that they cross their large black sows with a duroc boar. :( Nothing against crossing but you can't call it rare breed unless it's pedigree.
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Personally I'd say that if both parents are rare breed, then it's rare breed. But I don't know if there are Trading Standards rules which define the use of the term?
Duroc isn't a British breed, is it? Personally I would be happy to see - and buy and eat - GOS x OSB, for instance, advertised as rare breed, but wouldn't want to see GOS x Pietrain or OSB x Duroc marketed the same way.
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Pigman ,
I ran my own small mammal farm for the pet trade years ago .
I researched genetics etc and thought about breeding super numbers from prolific producers.
What I actually found was that the creatures that gave high numbers of young for their species which were above the average sized litters did not infact carry on giving high numbers , the stock was also weak if used for breeding
We used to run all matings via a spreadsheet system and it soon became apparent that certain blood lines with average litters when inter bred consistantly gave high litter numbers .
Once we understood why we never bred from the high number litters but grew them on for sale instead
It was the same for all our species, all nine species of them
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Hi Dan,
It would be interesting to know if these people are represented on the forum but this website looks to be along the lines you are thinking of and appears to be working for them.
http://www.scottsfieldpork.co.uk/ (http://www.scottsfieldpork.co.uk/)
Pete
Thats what im thinking of, somthing similar, I have it all planned out, in my head anyways!
Also, thanks again for all you're comments, The supermarkets are somthing I would be steering clear of, unless there was scope to one day develop a deal. We currently supply to the supermarket but have created other markets, we sell our pork to all of Melbournes big resturants, we also sell suckling pigs that are sold through local and regional butchers, they do really well! The mass market I was thinking of would be exactly that, deli's, butchers and not just local ones, I would try to supply butchers and deli's away from where my production base would be. And there is always the option to bring the finished product, in the form of a hog roast food van to all large scale events. It's pretty much free marketing!
And the last thing I want to do is stop other people from producing rare breed pork. The only way we are going to get herd numbers up and keep bloodlines pure is by having more of these fantastic little animals around our country.