How much to feed a pig.



Daisy relaxes while the piglets play.

First, a point of order.  I have decided that if the sunrise is a mass of grey sky it will not get star billing at the top of the page. This is for two reasons. One: to punish the god of the sunrises for making me get up at silly o'clock just to see what grey looks like. Two: the first picture is often what appears in links to posts - who's going to follow a link with a picture of grey sky??

Thursday 21st June 2012
It's summer!
... really.

How much to feed a pig?

Most importantly, never ask the pigs. There are many sayings about pigs, not all true, but the one about beady eyes is, and so is the one about being greedy!

The books tell you how much to feed your pigs, but of course it's not an exact science. In general, if they are not squealing as if the end of the world is upon them, then you're feeding them too much. For pigs are ALWAYS hungry and will attempt to eat whatever you put in front of them. The extent of the squealing is the only clue you will get from them.

This is actually quite a useful feature of pigs, in that there is most definitely one way to a pig's heart. Make it skip a meal and it will follow that bucket of food wherever you lead it. In fact, it will switch allegiance from you at the drop of a hat if it's someone else holding the bucket.

I found a quote to sum this up:

 "If pigs could vote, the man with the slop bucket would be elected swineherd every time, no matter how much slaughtering he did on the side.."

And that brings me onto the subject of what to feed a pig. Well, they'll eat pretty much anything, though mine don't like onions or orange peel. They're also very strictly not allowed to eat anything that has been in the kitchen, so these days the slops bucket is a no no.

At the right time of year, my pigs get lots of apples. Caution is required here, as I have heard of pigs getting drunk on apples!

They also get lots of potatoes. In fact, tons of potatoes, literally. All those that are the wrong size or shape or that have blemishes. But potatoes are not the ideal food for pigs and are only really of much value if cooked. But of course, not in the kitchen, and probably not with gas and electricity costing as much as they do these days. So most people go ahead and feed raw potatoes, unless they've got endless supplies of wood and an outdoor cooker.



Personally, I see potatoes as a filler and as a means of providing variety for the pigs. I like to chuck them all over the place and encourage the pigs to hunt for them.

I also have a very scientific way of knowing how many potatoes is the right amount to feed. For this I'll need the photo at the top of this post again, to illustrate my point.



Can you see the four tyres? Well, at feed time I grab a handful of spuds and take aim. When I've managed to get one potato in each tyre, that's enough. So there you have it, my scientific way of measuring how many potatoes to feed. The best feature of this system is that the potatoes bounce off the tyres and end up all over the place. The downside is that I think the pigs have worked out my system, as the tyres keep moving and there's always one or two which are impossibly distant. They also stand in the way of the tyres, seeming impervious to the occasional thump on the back by a flying spud!



Pigs do, undoubtedly, have their favourite foods. They will methodically pick out their favourites from a pile of vegetables and will always pick out the clover and dandelion roots from a mound of weeds.

Unfortunately their absolute favourite is pig nuts. These are not some delightfully natural food dug from the beech and oak forests of England, nor the seed of a country herb found growing wild in the fenland dykes. No! This is the rather romantic name for the manufactured pellets which are their standard food. Coming in 20kg or 25kg sacks, it resembles giant layers pellets, fish food or even cat litter! And it goes up in price by about twice the rate of inflation!

These sacks of sow and weaner pellets are what makes keeping pigs such a marginal enterprise. They are also the perfect package of protein and nutrient and somehow the pigs know this, as they'll leave all other foodstuffs in favour of their pellets.

So back to the title of this post. How much to feed them.

Well, there's no easy answer! But in general, if they look like they are getting podgy, cut down a  little bit. Within a week you'll notice them looking leaner.

I'm not sure how to know if you're not feeding them enough. I guess they've always managed to hoodwink me into feeding them plenty!

Moving Mountains

Sunday 3rd June 2012
Rain.

Spuds, Muck and more Muck
Today I moved not one, not two, but three mountains! I had arranged to go over to our friends and collect their bagged-up horse manure, but when I opened up the garage to hook up the trailer, I remembered that it was still half full with pig potatoes which needed loading into sacks and taking down to the pig pens. Sue and I got stuck in and it wasn't too long before half a ton of spuds were bagged up, apart from a carpeting of potato eyes on the floor of the trailer. 
The goose-barrow really earned it's keep today. I can fairly easily move 250kg on the barrow, so a couple of trips and everything was in the right place.

We then headed off to collect the 60 or so plastic bags of horse manure. Weighing in at between 5 and 8kg each, and more when wet, this was another job for the goose barrow when we returned. There was already a load of manure bags sitting by the heaps waiting to be unloaded. So that was over a hundred bags of muck to be split open and heaped up, or to put it another way, well over half a ton. By lunchtime the job was finished and so, just about, was I.
Like a marathon runner, I was pleased that it drizzled most of the day, though I must have looked pretty bedraggled by the end of it. 

But that was only two mountains moved, and the third towered over the first two, for Gerald's old stable still needed mucking out. I reckoned about 40 large wheelbarrows worth all needed digging out, wheeling down the land and unloading at the other end. Fortunately my muscles got a second wind and for a few hours I felt like Popeye. 

An admirable hobby
By early evening I welcomed the chance to pause and admire the agility of a hobby which cut through the air. Amazingly this falcon preys on swifts and swallows, particularly on migration and in late summer when there are plenty of young, inexperienced birds to hunt. Our small colony of breeding swallows attracts these falcons occasionally and the swallows always let me know of their presence as the adults fly up towards the hobby, twittering madly. I have only once seen a hobby actually take a bird in flight. It is more usual to see them catching their other favourite foodstuff over reedbeds, where they swoop in search of dragonflies which they catch and dismember in flight. Anyway, today's bird shot low through ahead of the rain and disappeared over the trees towards the Main Drain.

After that pause I pushed myself hard to get the job done and was feeling decidedly weary by the time the sun was plummeting toward the horizon.
That last barrowful was a joy to unload. A very, very good day's work done.

My muscles will be aching in the morning though, so more gentle jobs will be in order for tomorrow.

 

A New Barrow

Wednesday 9th May 2012

Thursday 10th May 2012

A New Barrow
Today I bought this geese barrow, with the intention of making it into a portable 

stall for selling our goods at the farm gate.

Sue enjoyed going for a ride on it! I'm not sure why this one is called a geese barrow, but the smaller one I have is a goat barrow.

More pig spuds
Also picked up another trailer load of potatoes for the pigs. With 8 hungry mouths to feed now, it won't last very long, but it does make a contribution.
Was a bit surprised to find that the bloke to whom I hired Gerald, who had casually asked me in conversation where I got my potatoes, had gone straight round and inferred that I had sent him, so nabbing half of my pig potatoes! Considering that I had done him a big favour with the boar, I was not too impressed, especially from a fellow smallholder.
Maybe there was just a misunderstanding. Who knows?

A new chick
On a brighter note, our first chick, one of the Welsummers in the lovely dark brown eggs, hatched today, bang on cue. No signs of life from the other eleven eggs though. An 8.5% success rate would be an all time low, but there's still time.

Gerry has been fascinated by the scent of lily flowers, as you can see!

Free potatoes

Monday 30th January 2012

A grey, chilly morning

A Confrontation with Fear and Dread
I am slightly surprised to be sat here blogging this evening. At best, I thought I'd be too ill, too groggy or semi-conscious. At worst ... For today I had an appointment with the dentist, an event which has stricken me with an irrational feear since fainting after an injection at the age of 15. Since then I have only consented to dental work on condition that I be sedated. However, I knew that when I moved to rural Lincolnshire it would be hard enough to find an NHS dentist (don't get me started on that subject), let alone one with sedation facilities. So it was that today I had a full scale, polish, a tricky deep filling and athe remnants of a back tooth ground down. And all with the help of FIVE INJECTIONS! I have to say, things have moved on since I was 15 and it wasn't actually too bad. And to think of all the worry I have caused myself. I am glad that I finally faced up to my fears, not that I had much choice. There's probably a more general lesson to be learned here.

Free Pig Potatoes
So as to divert my mind from the afternoon's events, I devoted the morning to visiting a local farm to collect over half a ton of free potatoes... that's right, free. When potatoes are harvested, those that are supermarket regulation go off for sale at prime prices. THe sorters pick out those which are the wrong size and these get bagged up as "seconds" for the local population to buy at discount rate.

A trailer full of free potatoes, along with 8 bales of straw which I picked up while I had the trailer hitched up. Gerry could clearly smell the wildlife of another farm in the straw.

A proportion, however, don't even make this grade. Either too oddly shaped, too large or too small, slightly green or nicked or sliced by the harvesting machine. Ask around and these can often be snaffled for free, or maybe a tenner a ton to buy the sorters a drink.

Many of these would be perfectly edible for humans, but since I have plenty still in storage in the garage, these potatoes are for the enjoyment of the pigs. They are not the ideal food for pigs, not unless cooked, which seems a lot of bother, especially as nothing is allowed to pass from the kitchen to the pigs. However, I like to toss a handful or three of spuds into the pig enclosure just to bulk up their pellet food and to give them the opportunity to snuffle and root around.