[patmci]

Hi guys,
           A local farmer has offered me 2 tons of apples from his orchard. I dont have that many pigs at the moment. 4 sows 1 boar and 20 weaners. What i am wondering is would it be safe to replace most of the pigs diet with apples and also how long should these apples keep.

Regards Patrick

[oaklandspigs]

Pat,

Sorry but replacing most of their diet would not be good.

Your weaners need protein to grow muscle (ie meat), so need to get this from their pig nuts.  The apples would make a good supplement, but not a replacement.

For your sows, we are loking at maintenance and you could get away with maybe 1/3 or even replace one meal a day for a short while, but such a pure alternative (as opposed to say waste fruit and veg with more varied nutrients) is not good long term, and maybe you should take less than two tons, or compost what goes bad before you feed.  You may also find that your pigs go squity!

Don't let me put you off feeding these, we are currently feeding small amounts of windfall apples to our sows each day.
 

[Fowgill Farm]

Agree with Oaklands we're replacing about a third of our pigs daily ration with windfall fruit and the remains of the polytunnel & veg garden, they need pig nuts to put on weight and grow. You'll know if you're overding the fruit as they'll have the squits!
HTh
mandy 

[patmci]

Thanks guys that makes my mind up

[harry]

GET A CIDER PRESS....... wait till they are almost rotten with juice

[tizaala]

Pigs can get very drunk on apples...........very, very ,drunk.

[Sylvia]

But the meat tastes lovely

[benkt]

Mine are getting about a quarter of their ration replaced with windfalls at the moment and seems to be doing no harm.

[Berkshire Boy]

benkt, how many apples do you give to replace 1/4 of their feed ?

[HappyHippy]

I was advised that 4 pounds of fruit & veg is about equal to 1 pound of pig nuts 

[Berkshire Boy]

Thanks for that HH. Will give it a try, should save me a few pennies over the next few weeks. 

[benkt]

HH sounds about right - At the moment, I feed half a bucket to each nuts to each of my groups, am and pm. I have been doing 1/4 bucket + 1 bucket of apples as their breakfast and then  normal evening meal.

[Barrett]

HI all, as the price of bagged food is expensive I tend to use whatever I can as well as nuts to fill them up, my local pub puts all there vegetable peelings in a bin for me, I also give mine Barley which they love, I do have one question, I live close to Thatchers Cider  in a village called Sandford no HOT FUZZ gags please  and they have something called pumice that the local farmers take away for there cattle do you think a small amount would be OK for pigs.

[Berkshire Boy]

Hi Barrett, pumice is fine for the pigs
 The veg peelings from your local pub are illegal. You cannot feed anything to pigs that has come from any type of kitchen.

[robert waddell]

you can feed veg from a kitchen IF IT HAS A SEPERATE VEG PREPARATION KITCHEN OR AREA