[robert waddell]

normally when we take our pigs to slaughter  there is no complaints        well today we have four going on the one way bus ride         and to many pigs they normally deal with about 20 but today 59 booked in      it is either a popular slaughter house or theres a lot getting rid of them 

[SallyintNorth]

Just rang my butcher about butchering one of mine - they've just had three booked in.  Could be a coincidence...

[Victorian Farmer]

7 weeks ago you could of had barley £120 a ton and had this mix with other yeast pellets etc and naw £205 for the same animal feed .The feed costs will be massive .Turkeys in the sales at £10 to much to feed to Christmas. Bread and food will be a mad price. Say 50 hens worth £500 cost to feed a month £100 with bedding  no money for  6 months £600 dawn and hard work for 6 months .Same with pigs etc.

[Berkshire Boy]

A BPA rep was saying she knows a unit that is slaughtering 100 pregnant sows because they won't be able too feed the piglets because of the high feed prices.

[Fowgill Farm]

BB i heard that too  just had my feed bill for last tonne and it was £330 delivered thats a £30 increase on the last tonne delivered about seven weeks ago time to start shopping around again, the trouble is normally at this time of year we have loads of pumpkins, apples etc this year literally zilch, gonna be a long hard winter i fear.
mandy

[Beewyched]

Very much the same with us Mandy 
Enough pig feed in now to last until the New Year (but yet to be paid for    ) 1 single solitary apple (a cooker) that looks like it's going to get blown off the tree well before it's ripe, no pumpkins & something's eaten ALL my brassicas (2 netted beds-full in 2 days    ) so very little homegrown for us either this year   
 

[domsmith]

Last of my pigs, bar a pet, are away tomorrow. sick of feeding them, sick of butchering them, sick of selling them.
gone from killing 5 a week to none.... happy days!

The price people want to pay for pork does not equal the sum of all the parts!

dominic

[Tamsaddle]

How sad all this is.   After all the work, dedication and 24/7 commitment everyone has put in breeding, raising, feeding and caring for their animals, only for them to have to be slaughtered early, or sold for peanuts, or given away free - as seems to be happening with loads of kunnies from the ads people have copied onto this forum.    We are having to downsize this year, entirely due to exorbitant costs, and will probably have to give up pigs altogether in 2013;  I am dreading living a pig-less life, but just cannot keep this drain on resources going indefinitely.   Our feed costs have just shot up from £350 to £390 a tonne at the big agricultural merchants I used to use; they couldn't care less if I buy my measly 200 kgs a week there or not.  We've been trying to sell 2 of our 4 pedigree sows at vaguely normal prices for ages - no interest from anyone, then you discover that at the Rare Breeds sale recently they were going for £30 - £50 each, approx. 1/4 to 1/8 the cost of producing them, depending on age.   No wonder.
 
All the expensive, over the top rules we have to obey:  about feedstuffs, no vegetable waste from supermarkets, slaughtering, butchery, super duper dedicated kitchens with multiple sinks and washable ceilings, walls and floors, refrigeration, packaging, weighing, labelling, selling pork, standstills, isolation - all of the costs add up, even though soaring feed prices is by far the worst problem.    There is no question proper care and diligence has to be taken to avoid foot and mouth and other diseases, and not to poison anyone with dodgily prepared pork, but both of these can be achieved perfectly well with common sense and without the ocean of rules and regulations that exist at the moment.  Supermarkets could safely dispose of spare fruit and veg to animal keepers without any risk of contamination - everything is so over packaged in plastic these days the likelihood of veg having made contact with meat is infinitessimal.
 
I reckon this sorry state of affairs will lead to more and more people breaking the rules rather than being forced to lose their beloved livestock, feeding their pigs god knows what to save money, home slaughter and butchery, etc.   Without some kind of government subsidy for smallholders, which obviously will never happen, we're not proper EU farmers after all, I cannot see how this dreadful state of affairs can be resolved.    A very       Tamsaddle   
 
 
 
 
 
 

[robert waddell]

the pig sales that have been quoted with prices    are not a true reflection on the rare breeds
lanark is mostly a pig masquerading as what ever breed it is called only Lynne( beweeyched) has sold anything with any credibility    the last time a good priced pig went through was a pietrain  and only because i ran it on  (we were going to try them)     the big problem with lanark with big pigs is they are in all probability going straight to slaughter and if the sellers were to even ask on here they would be told where to take them  to double there money
 
if the story about 100 sows going to slaughter is correct     that is 1100-1600 piglets out of the chain 2200-3200 taking in the full year
 
 
so the national herd is going down AGAIN   Europe will fill the gap  and i think that has been the master plan all along    vion closing well it is dutch and the dutch are the expert bacon producers
 
spring of the year one herd in Scotland was expanding by 1000 sows    will need to find out what they are doing now 

[chickenfeed]

i know of one man that sent 30 in pig sows off to slaughter, another has closed his 300 sow unit.
strange how things come around in the 1980's the farm next door to my parents had over 3,000 pigs and more or less overnight he closed down my parents on a smaller scale at the time they were sending 10 - 20 pigs off a week did the same vowing never to keep pigs again.................until i had a brain wave a good few years back to start keeping a few pigs for meat sending only 30ish off a year nowadays we only sell weaners and breeding stock and kill for the family its much easier.

times are hard but thats part of the ups and downs of life 

[Victorian Farmer]

ITS simple France 5 euros for a bag off feed laying pellets 4 and a half euros you can keep pigs goats chickins at half the price than in the UK .The government will import more we will have no apples pigs greens chickins that will suit the government look at the fuel costs after the war we were self sufficient and the government helped to archive this and naw they wont you to eat value food and watch telly all day and do no think quality of life will be crap  i am dreading living a pig-less life  Tamsaddle and I'm dreading dawn sizing throe cost not good but a very good post from some one or cares about animals well said Tamsaddle

[Victorian Farmer]

spring of the year one herd in Scotland was expanding by 1000 sows that's because the biggist pig breeder has pact up so he is the only 1 left nere me .

[HappyHippy]

BB i heard that too  just had my feed bill for last tonne and it was £330 delivered thats a £30 increase on the last tonne delivered about seven weeks ago time to start shopping around again, the trouble is normally at this time of year we have loads of pumpkins, apples etc this year literally zilch, gonna be a long hard winter i fear.
mandy

Same here too 
Last month's tonne was up by £30 (up over £70 a tonne from last year) haven't had this months' bill yet - not looking forward to that one much either  We've bought a half tonne of sugar beet pellets - cost £150, but it increases in weight by about 6 times once soaked - so that will help make the pig nuts go a bit further.

We're running on a few young LB's and OSB's, but not as many as I'd like and it's purely down to cost of feed 
And with D-day for conception approaching for next year's show litters, well, we're not quite sure yet how many we can actually afford to put in-pig  My head say's "probably one and cull the two older girls" but my heart says "you have 2 rare bloodlines, you owe it to the breed to have another litter from them too"  rock and a hard place time 
Thank goodness (for the sake of Large Blacks) I'm a hopeless romantic and sentimental pig breeder 

The Kunekunes will be staying (and increasing in numbers) though  The 'figures' stack up better for them, so it's daft not to isn't it 

[robert waddell]

i know we have had a debate on the acclaimed cheapness of keeping and rearing kunnies   and others have piled in as well
 
from past experiences of my own with pigs and the cost of feed  proper pig food does work out cheaper as a feed     other supplements can be used    but they still cost money even scrap fruit and veg costs money just to collect it then the nutritional value of supplements for growth    all those advocating kunnies have never come on with a weight chart of there growth with cheap food   it is all good and well  saying it costs £18  or £80 to take them to a decent weight for killing
or even £180 per pig  it is what the cost per kilo of pork that is sold and that includes food purchase price transport  killing charge and butchery costs
 
 
Debbie and Andrews sausages   they startarted small  just like the majority on here then they saw the light why lose money rearing pigs where we can buy them from others  that are rearing them in the same way as we do    they have the losses we have the proffit

[Beewyched]

Ok - I'll "pile" back in with my personal experience.
I keep KKs because I love them (have tried other breeds - weaners & breeding) & I am not always "on top of my game", so I stay with the KKs because they are so ameable & they eat less (so less lugging of feed on my part) & they do less damage to the ground (we rent our holding) & they are hardy (& I'm not saying other breeds aren't) & can be transported in a small trailor (again physically easier for me to move when off the vehicle - no jokes about reversing please    ).
I keep Kune Kune because they suit my personal situation
&
I can keep in touch with all the lovely piggy-folk on here & at shows/marts 
Not because I am trying to make a living from them - my pigs are my hobby - I breed & sell piglets for showing & breeding (if I think they meet Breed Standards), outdoor companion/"pet" pigs & meat.  The meat we've had from ours has been really good & I get local smallholders & farmers returning every year for meat weaners.
I guess looking at the lb by lb ratio the cost of bedding/wormers/vaccinations/equipment/transport/kill charge (my OH does the butchery - only family & friends - they're small remember ) is probably higher.  I can only guess that this is off-set in hard feed, even though they need to be run-on for a few extra months in comparison to other breeds.
So Robert - guilty as charged    - I haven't kept a weight/growth chart for meat production