The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Livestock => Pigs => Topic started by: Sissinghurst Pigs on September 09, 2015, 12:51:11 pm
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Hi - Has anyone heard that feeding fattening pigs beetroot is bad for the meat? I was recently told that too much can taint the meat, also one shouldn't feed them too much of any veg/salad high in iron (chard, spinach etc), any opinions on this too please?
thanks in advance,
Andy
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Can't say I've ever heard that or noticed any difference in the meat. We feed a real mix though, never too much of the one thing ;)
HTH
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Someone told me that feeding a lot of carrots would turn the fat orange. We fed several tons to ours last year and no orange fat resulted. We also fed a lot of swedes for a while which did result in a lot of farting but no detriment to the pork.
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Many thanks to you both.
Cheers,
Andy
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I think the issue here is how much is too much. Dont underestimate the lengths that some people will go to in order to save money on producing livestock. Heaven knows how many carrots you would have to feed to make the fat orange but keratin will colour even human flesh if in excess. As for beetroot etc I do feed it along with carrots, apples and brassicas,green beans etc and havent found it to be a problem.
A farmer near me fed his sheep nothing but baked beans for one winter as he got a load of out of date stock for free. I'm sure he was rubbing his grubby little hands together at how much money he had saved.
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my friend fed her baby lots of jarred baby food, of which the majority contained carrots. honestly her skin turned orange for a while. mind you we never noticed much difference when feeding our tamworths. carrots :roflanim: :roflanim: :roflanim:
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We once had quite a lot of beetroot in a batch of veg we got, we fed it to the sows, so don't know about tainting the meat, but we did get quite a lot of reddish purple poops! Same with strawberries!
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Thank you for the replies.
cheers,
Andy
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Following a similar conversation with my mum I tried seeing if you could feed enough beetroot to ducks to make them lay pink eggs. Didn't work but spent a lot of time cleaning up vibrant fushia pink duck poo from everywhere!