[Tropical pigs and stuff]

I have a very small holding in Cebu Philippines and have started to keep a few pigs.
I also have a couple of Villa resorts and guests were always asking for traditional 'Lechon' spit roasted young pig and the only pigs I could buy just had sooo much fat on them.
We tend to buy weaners at around 1 month old and roast at 3 month for spit roast and 4-5 months for hams and bacon.
I am mixing a lot of old vegetable bananas pineapple mango I buy cheaply from the market when past their best.
When I read the rule of thumb; 450G per day for each month of age should i just add the fruit and veg too the 450G or include it?
In the Philippines it seems impossible to buy feed that is free from chemicals so I do like to feed the fruit and veg too them.
By the way the meat is very lean and truly delicious after roasting in this traditional manner.

[Fowgill Farm]

First of all welcome and hope you find the site useful. Obviously here in the UK we don't get the extremes of temperature & weather that you guys do so some things might work differently.
First of all we don't wean here until 7 or 8 wks letting mum give all her milk goodness to the little ones, they are supplemented from about 3wks with what we call 'creep' (baby pig size pellet feed). Sounds like what you do is what we call 'suckling pig' and here they prefer them to be milk fed to give a whiter softer meat much like veal calves.
Generally the fruit and veg ration works on a 4:1 ration (4 x450g fruit & veg to 1 x 450g hard feed) but remember they do need a the hard food protein ration to build up their strength, muscle etc.
all the best
mandy

[Tropical pigs and stuff]

Thanks so much for your mail mandy....We buy our piglets we are told they are 4 weeks.  I will talk with the sellers and try to get them to leave them with mother for extra few 2-3 weeks. 
The pigs we serve too our guests are around 20 kilos before gutting and feed 15 people too a big feast.
To be honest I am very new to this and have only just bought my second batch of 4 piglets.  I will try to post some photos later if you are interested..
I have ordered a book to learn more and I think this site with all you experienced people will be of great help.
Thanks again,
mark

[mowhaugh]

Sounds very interesting, I would like to see your photos, I don't know much about the Philippines other than about Typhoon Haiyan, were you much affected?

[Marches Farmer]

What type of pigs do you have?  I would guess that the local breed has the short Asian snout and is dark skinned and haired?  Over here we tend to feed 16% protein, to build the frame for the meat to sit on.  Don't know the protein content of all the interesting things yours are likely to get to eat!

[Tropical pigs and stuff]

No were we were not much effected by that terrible typhoon buy 50km north of us on our island was totally destroyed.  My wife's family live in leyte close to the centre and lost everything.  We lost a couple of coconut trees only.  We were very lucky.
I will try to dig out some pics of my pigs.  I am in Hong Kong now and will be back in Philippines next month and will definitely take more then...
A freind is telling me that I should avoid mixing boars and gilts.  I have just bought 3 gilts and one boar that i will have castrated next week.  Should I separate them?

[Tropical pigs and stuff]

Dear Helmut,
A photo attached of one of our young pigs being roasted.
regards,
mark
www.cebubeach.net

20140613_163800_resized_8.jpg

[Tropical pigs and stuff]

Sorry about last post as I am trying to work out how to put up photos.  Have given up now so if you wouldn't mind giving me an email address i would be happy to send some photos of my piggies...
Thanks

[bloomer]

if you send them to [email protected] i can put them on the thread for everyone to see...

[Marches Farmer]

A freind is telling me that I should avoid mixing boars and gilts.  I have just bought 3 gilts and one boar that i will have castrated next week.  Should I separate them?

Keeping entire boars with gilts could cause problems but should be OK if castrated.  The boar is likely to reach slaughter weight a bit ahead of the gilts.

[shygirl]

Keeping entire boars with gilts could cause problems but should be OK if castrated.  The boar is likely to reach slaughter weight a bit ahead of the gilts.

even if castrated?

[bloomer]

This was our first traditional (Litson) piggy roast.  This gilt was 23KG and fed 14 people with loads left over for the next day. My staff were very happy indeed....  This type of roast is very common in The Philippines for any fiesta or celebration of which the Filipinos have lots.  All comes from 400 years of Spanish colonial rule I believe.I am getting orders now from almost every group that rent my beach villa resorts. www.cebubeach.net  I buy the 4 week old piglets at 25 GBP and sell at 135 GBP at 12 weeks old.  Quite a good margin as absolutely nothing to pay except the food which costs 25 pence  per kilo.  All electricity for lighting and pumping the water is powered by my 2.4KW of solar panels.....

This is the first picture i have been sent plus text from the opening poster, I have others from him to share but its sunday and im off to church, will put up more later.

Bloomer