small scale hog farming

Brian806

Member
Anyone on here do small scale hog farming as a side bussiness
and make a profit? Im talking like finishing 200 or less a year? I
planted 40 acers of corn this year and 25 acers of beans! So
have most of my own feed! And i have my own grinder mixer
never had a use for it but it was cheap so.i bought it! Haha! And
rent a farm with a old bank barn so i gotta place to put them!
 
You have feed and facilities but do you have a good market, local sale barn, local packer, how about ready supply of feeder pigs? The cost of doing business such as sales commission and buyer commission if you have to get someone to procure the feeders are big expenses that are somewhat offset by volume. If your 40 acres of corn yields even fairly well you should be able to feed out at least double the number your talking about, I doubt if you will be satisfied with pig performance on raw soybeans and would be better off selling the beans and buying back your supplement.
 
my brother and I run a 7200 head finishing site, but we also do about 25 head a year just for the local locker. Most people don't want confinement raised hogs for processing and prefer "pasture" hogs. We stagger them out so that we have 3 or 4 ready every month starting at about September. We get our pigs as feeder pigs from a local sow unit.
 
Feeding hogs for a profit is a whole different ballgame today than what it was forty years ago. The market situation was already mentioned so I don't need to elaborate on that. The small local hog buying stations are gone now.

What you really need to consider is the breeding. Today's lean breeds don't have the stamina to do well in old open facilities. That's the main reason I got out 20 years ago. I had the old barn and hog house with the bedding and outside feeders but the hogs were getting leaner and less rugged so the rate of gain went down and the death loss went up. They had fresh dry bedding all the time, I cleaned every day, they had plenty of feed and water but I still couldn't pamper them enough.

If you do want to feed hogs in an old barn FOR PROFIT, you need the old breeds with higher backfat: Duroc, Hampshire, Yorkshire, but not Landrace. Landrace is lean and dumber than a box of rocks! Then you need to find a special market for that kind of hog. Buyers in the regular market will dock you so bad for backfat your hogs will be darned near worthless. If your barn has been empty for awhile the diseases are probably not there and you might be able to feed out a couple of batches drug free and sell the hogs to a market that likes drug free pork if you can certify it that way.

A fella east of me a few miles pasture farrows the old high backfat breeds and then sells the feeder pigs to a special market for that type of hog. He does very well at it and I imagine they are drug free because he rotates pastures to break up the disease. It fun to watch those sows and pics running around in an alfalfa pasture. Strong and healthy!

If you use the grinder mixer you bought expect to replace a lot of bearings at first because they have been exposed to the salt and minerals in feed and will be rusted. If it's used regularly and kept polished up and dry the bearings will last a long time. Just the nature of the beast.

For a wrapup you CAN feed small batches of hogs in old facilities and make money but you need the breeding and the market to go with it. One plus to feeding hogs the old way is it's good exersize pitching manure and bedding. LOL. Jim
 
You are not going to feed raw soybeans to hogs and get any performance. 200 pigs a year is almost half a hog a day, I hope you are a marketing expert. I'm not sure where you are from but here in Iowa the direct marketing system is full of suppliers and short on consumers. The least risky way to direct market is to only raise animals you already have sold. Having livestock on feed that are already fat and waiting for a buyer is not something I would ever do again. If I was forced to do it again I would start small and grow with my customer base, that might take 20 years.

Nate
 
I was thinking i could sell to local butchers thiers one here that buys like 40 pigs a week! But nobody around here seems to mess with feeding pigs unless its for just themselves! Just thinking about how to grow my farming so hopefully i can quit my day job someday!
 
If you can get connected with local butchers go for it. They can give you an idea of they want before you buy the feeder pigs. Believe it or not I had the best luck with buying sale barn pigs. I had more health related problems with pigs from feeder pig companies. In theory it should be the other way around. Jim
 
You really have to watch your ration on protein. Back in the early 60's I was a hired hand in Pike Co. Il., My boss, Donald Parks, worked closely, with the U of I, trying to eficently, raise fat hogs. We ground our own feed, and had to cut down on the soy bean meal, due to losing hogs to protein poisoning.
 
I currently have 50 head. I try to sell locally to folks willing to buy a whole hog. But, if I can't find a customer, I load them up and haul them 70 miles to the auction at Mexico. This year is especially good for the small time hog farmer. Prices for grocery store pork are up and corn prices are down. Add to that, beef prices are through the roof and it's a good time to have a few head ready to sell. The only downside is if you have to buy replacement stock. 50 pound feeder pigs are going for over $2 per pound.

I've heard it said that if you buy your pigs but make your feed you'll be OK. And if you breed your pigs but buy feed you'll still be OK. But if you buy pigs and buy feed, you'll go broke. Obviously, the best way is to grow your own pigs and own feed.
 
My brother raises hogs small scale. These are some problems he has had. Local lockers won't buy or promote his hogs because they have sources for really cheap rejected butcher sized hogs from area confinement hog operations. Hogs with ruptures, broken leg, whatever. More often than not he has more hogs ready for butcher than he has got sold. If you are going to raise hogs on dirt, then you have to get those kind of hogs to start with. If you put confinement hogs on dirt, you will have all kinds of problems with them. He has actually made more money selling feeder pigs, than feeding them out and selling butcher hogs. I don't know why but people will pay crazy prices for 3 or 4 feeder pigs and feed em all summer rather than buy a butcher hog worth the money. Another thing that happened to him was after he started doing it, 2 or 3 other people in the area got the idea from him and out of the blue started raising some hogs too. The closest outlet he has for selling hogs that he can't get sold locally for butcher is an hour drive. And if you sell there you take some sort of a dock no matter what wether it be low numbers or whatever. My advice is to start out small scale and only take it as far as it will take you.
 

If you are in the right area and can do some marketing you can do well growing for pig roasts. I have known people who have a regular clientele plus many others looking to buy their pigs. Obviously they have to be the right size during the summer.
 

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