Raising Pigs

Does any one on here raise pigs?
I'm thinking about raising 6
feeder pigs on a old concrete cow
lot. What kind of shelter does a
pig need and do you have to bed
them? I have read online about
feed ratios. They say a pig needs
16% protein and then wean to 12%
as it grows. It appears corn and
soybean meal is a common diet.
Thanks for any help or guidance.
 
I raised pigs for a few years fed them mostly hole barley and hay I always bedded them with straw In the winter in the summer I had a mud hole for em
 
I would like to see the answers to this also. My family used to raise a couple hundred head a year. If the OP doesn't mind I would like to add a few questions to these.

If you were going to mix a feed ration what would it have in it? Say 100lbs of soybean mean 300lbs of corn? (These are dummy numbers but I'd like to see what amount of each ingredient should be put in a feed ration.

What is the best market to sell to if you can not sell them all directly? Sale barns, specific places?
 
I help a neighbor raise pigs. When we're growing out butcher hogs we mix 500# of feed at a time , our mix is 370 shelled corn, 110 soybean meal, and 18 of designrite mineral. As far as shelter goes we do bed ours and they have a hut to get into , seems like pigs can take the cold but not the wind. hth jstpa
 
Bed them with wheat straw and sprinkle a little old used engine oil mixed 50/50 with diesel fuel and they will look like they were raised in your living room.
 
I raise a couple now and then and the feed you describe is what I use. I grind some corn, add some soybean meal and buy a mineral mix made for pigs. Last pigs we raised were bought in end of May and butchered in November at about 300 lbs. I kept them in a pen with some straw for bedding and just let them eat and grow. They need a way to stay out direct sun and the bad elements but they love mud. Pigs don't sweet so they roll around in mud to stay cool. They will stay clean provided they have enough space and the pen is cleaned occasionally. They are a good way to use up some extra fruits and vegetables and if you have surplus eggs they will eat the whole egg with shell.They will eat about anything. I like to feed them mostly grain mixtures but supplement it with the garden stuff. They are easy to grow.
 
If we new where you are, we could better answer your shelter question. Pigs like the same as you and I , dry draft free shelter. And in hot weather , they also enjoy shade and good air flow.
Winter comes with snow, and sometimes 0F temperatures where I am. So if you gave 6 pigs a 10x10 building, that was draft free, and had enclosed eves, with plenty of straw, and a small door for them to enter and exit , they could be quite comfortable..
Pigs will drop their poo in a drafty area , or a wet spot. So if your building leaks water into the bedding, or has a drafty corner , they will crap in their shelter, just what you don?t want.
Given the opportunity, pigs will be very clean animals. When you see pigs wallowing in the mud, it is because the mud is cool, and a good coat of mud helps protect them from biting insects.
I fed pigs for many years, but always had them penned up inside a barn. Not large scale, but often as many as 300 at one time. We would run dry sow outside in a barn yard, and they will work the heck out of a fence. We used to run electric fence around the inside of the yard, ends that quick. Pigs are very sensitive to a shock. This might be something valuable for you to think about. Pigs are remarkably strong, and can force their way through a hole in the fence, or borrow under if there is any chance.
If you are going to feed these pigs in summer or warm times only, then a roofed area to protect the pigs from rain and give them a shaded place to get out of the sun is all the shelter they will need.
One more though, if you are using a automatic drinking fountain, place if in a low area of your yard, or where you want you pigs to park their waste, and not near where you want to feed them. Pigs love to play in or with their water, and will make it all wet wherever they drink, and they will go to that wet area and poop there too.lol
Hope some of my ramblings help, best of luck
 
Anything would work for a shelter, as long as they don't get a hold of it or its on tight. We used a top from a camper once lasted about a month. If you make a pen, make sure it high (I seen em jump 6ft already), tight...if they can move it or chew it consider it gone. We already bed pigs out in an open air fence with a crude roof/shed(the camper top and skids), just dump the straw/old hay on em, they bury in and get shaggier hair to deal with cold..


Pigs will eat anything, so grow a garden and dump the scrap to em. We got some feeders in that were on high protein diet(basically show pigs), things didn't grow for squat. We have found pigs that are raised out at pasture or on the garden scraps early on(and if the parents were it helps a lot too), got bigger faster.
 
It may be hard to get rid of them now days, since the local hog buying stations are pretty much gone. Maybe a smaller
custom butcher shop will buy a few that you cannot sell to customers. Hogs need 14--16% protein during the finishing
period, higher when younger. Usually easiest to buy hog supplement that is about 40% protein, and has the minerals and
vitamins in it too. Usually mix with ground corn in 80-20 ratio, and that will give you the correct ration (80% corn).
 
Look up pig tractor on the internet. I bolted 4 gates together moved it a little every day . If you use electric fence put your post in at an angle that way it will catch them on the back and they won't bury the bottom wire. Pasture raised makes them build muscle not fat.
 
pigs lead with nose, catch the shock on there back they go forward more(now they are out and don't want to go back in), catch the shock on the nose they back off and stay a way from the fence. I just remembered about the bunch we had running with the beefers. Post were set straight the fence wire was just over the ground by oh 8 inches. a time or two they tried it after that they knew it was there, never got buried either.
 
I'm located east of St. Louis in southern Il. We get cold winters but never below 10 degrees for a long time. Our summers are hot with high humidity. Could you build a shelter with infloor water heat and skip the bedding? How do you keep pigs cool on concrete? What are your feed mixtures? I have plans of building a outdoor finshing floor with a slotted floor over a pit in the future if this hog thing takes off.
 
Your comment about plans for the future , and building a slated floor over a pit , made me smile. I am not a mean person so do't take this wrong. Try the first batch, get them raised to market weight , experience will teach you lots. Loading market weight hogs can be a trial in it's self. You need to have a shoot the pigs can walk through , but not turn around in. Pigs being loaded out of a building , don't like to go from a bright lit barn on to a dark truck , or out of a dark barn into a full sunlight. And lots of luck getting a pig to go out a door and up a shoot if there is wind blowing in the door at them.
Pigs are great to raise and fun stock to keep. Go slow , and watch and learn, before you make any big commitment . Oh ya , if you can't get a pig to go where you want it to go, just put a 5 gallon bucket on it's head , and back it to where you need it to go. They always back up.
 
Most feed dealers will carry or can get you Hog Supplement to mix in with your ground shelled corn. It should have a label on the supplement that will tell you how much to mix in with the corn to get the percent of protein feed you want to feed them. I'm assuming you have a grinder mixer to make your own feed.

I built a 8x16 ft. open on the sides shed with a slated wood floor on two 4x6 skids so I could move it around. I could raise up to four at a time in it. I had a 2 hole 100 lb feeder in it and a small steel tank with a nipple on the bottom for water. If you are going with electric fence make sure you put it low enough, like someone said, they lead with their nose.
 
I probably should have said shoulder . I had sows with little ones and they could flip a sod over real easy . There is that sweet spot to hit them to far back and there gone but with a little practice that double shot works like a cow trainer.
 
I'm up here in Wi, 10-15 below is a about the coldest I've seen. If you want to try a heated floor it go for it, won't help much. The floor heats under them, nothing to keep them warm as the heat raises and off their backs... as the bedding would cover and insulate. Concrete is naturally cooler under cover, so no need for that. The pigs we have had on concrete were in the barn(protected) and never worried about em(not sure about exposed though). If it gets to hot just a take a hose and mist em down every so often.

That batch that was out in the open was bare dirt for a floor. Come out in dead of winter, shelter empty...bang the feed bucket a few times a big mound would raise and break into pigs and straw.

Now feed ration that's a good question....a couple buckets of mixed grain(corn, wheat, oats.....). A hay bale once in a while, bucket of bread (we have a source) once in a while. any produce scraps (the scrap from prepping, stuff that's to soft or rotten to use.....)..... In short anything and everything gets tossed in the pig pen at some point.
 
Traditional Farmer Maybe so, never had acorn fed pigs. But apple fed are second to none in my book. Carp fed are the worst, bacon smells like you?re cooking fish.
 
some one told us about the bucket over the head trick, my advice on that use with caution. We had a stubborn pig once and tried that. The goofy pig still went forward, rolled my bother(who was holding the bucket) over.Then I got a head of it to attempt to block...it got under me some how and gave my head a good knocking on the ceiling.
 
Good luck on trying to keep their water pure. I used to watch the antics of mine to defeat every instance of my trying to keep then from "flavoring" their water........can't believe a chicken follows the pig in the pecking order.

What took the cake was that I installed a demand bowl on the side of a pen support post, high enough to be at snout level....snout has to push the lever to get the bowl to fill. No joke, one day I was headed out there and a sow had backed up to it, straddled it and let loose. That was it. Off to the sale they went.

I fed Farley's Show Gilt 100% Corn ration. Once I thought I'd switch to Milo and couldn't believe the difference in the meat. May have been the oil in the Corn. Corn hams were delicious, had an iridescent glow to the meat, was firm, and sliced nice and edges were sharp where cut. Milo had no flavor, no color and slicing left a ragged edge at each lump of tissue.

Raised primarily Durocs (the brown ones) and liked them best for flesh and flavor. Also had a few Hampshire (black with white belly band) and s few Pollen China once (the white ones with a lot of lard).
 
Why would you want to try keep the water that clean, I got 6 straw based barns 200 hogs in each with 6 hole waterers with lids on bolted to the floor in the feed area, they should lift the lid to drink from them. When I scrape the concrete they blow bubbles in the resulting pig muck that goes over the edge. They then either go to the feed trough or the waterer after this contaminating one or both.


If the waterer gets full of slop/ corn meal I clean it out then, by hand or between batches it's drained and hosed out. I could make a career out of trying to keep water clean every day all day, but not make any more money.
just for fun mine rip the lids off and hide them in the bedding so you have to find whats missing, or bend them so they don't close. Or if they find small stones they drop them in the waterer and shove them under the float housing jamming it up, so they got no water.

Anybody that feeds any number of hogs, that has no sense of humor won't last long at it. The hog will win one or two rounds even if it's in the last 5 minutes you own it going on the truck.
Regards Robert
 
Look into what the one guy mentioned about finding a place that butchers them. Getting harder to find places that will do them. Even if they do them they can be booked up way ahead of time and when yours are ready they can't take them. If you can butcher them yourself that is where you will save ALOT of money. You can buy pork in the store for less then you will have in them by the time you are done if you have to buy everything.
 

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