Pig Feed

I want to grind my own pig feed, can I grind the whole cob and all? What else to I have to add to the mixer to get the correct formula needed for the pig feed? Thank you.

some people around here add oats, square bales of alfalfa hay, hog concentrate, bean meal, etc.

I usually start out on a 4:1 and finish on a 5:1 ration. I buy 40% supplement and add a lil salt and mineral. Can throw in meds if ya need to.

Sows, fats,wieners? Sure you can grind the whole thing, but for best results, see your feed mill and ask for a ration specifically for what you are feeding.

Ben

Ear corn is not very efficient for growing and fattening hogs because of the fiber content. Hogs are very efficient meat producers if the ration is high in energy and the correct amount of protein is fed. To mix your own feed economically you have to adjust the rations according to the age and size of the hogs being fed, weaning pigs can use up to 20% protein efficiently where growing hogs don't need over 15% and hogs in the fattening stage a little less, breeding stock can be maintained on 12% protein and if I had ear corn to feed it would be to the breeding stock. Basically you can use most any feed ingredients that are available in your local area, corn and soybean meal with minerals, salt and calcium added is the most common hog feed most places but cotton seed meal or linseed meal or canola meal will all work just as well. If you have good leafy alfalfa hay adding 5-10% to the ration will cut down on some of the protein meal. To learn how to correctly calculate a balanced ration using what is available I would suggest you go on e-bay and buy a copy of Morrisons Feeds and Feeding, try to find the unabridged 21st edition as it has the most information of all of the editions, this was the preferred college textbook in animal husbandry for roughly 50 years, lots of interesting and valuable information, well worth the 10 bucks or so it will cost.

You'll have to shell the corn before you grind it if you are feeding growing pigs. LAA pretty well covered the rest of it. I feel that feeding the rations that your local feed store supplies will work the best for you. I've seen people try to mix their own rations with poor results. Myself included.

When I was a kid I had 13 pigs. I had corn ground, oats ground, (I think I used about two parts corn, one oats) mixed tankage and soy bean oil meal by figuring the protein in each to come up with the ration I wanted. I weighed this on a scale and hand mixed it together with a shovel. I just kept changing the protein level with the size of the pigs. When they got close to marked I picked corn off the ground behind the corn picker. Fed that ear corn and calculated how much protein supplement they needed. That was a whole lot of work but what I had plenty of time. If you are going to use your own corn, you have to calculate the protein in the corn and add supplement to bring ration up to the needs of the pigs at their stage of growth. Plus mineral supplements of course. Crude protein, digestible protein, all comes into the mix. Many a hog used to be raised on ear corn, on the cog with a wild guess of how much pelleted supplement to throw in. Not usually done that way anymore.

Our home mix, back in the day consisted of shelled corn, oats, and mineral suppliments available at the local mill where we had it ground. Sorry I can't remember the formula, but that was close to 60 years ago. We also ground for cows and chickens (different formulas). Rations were probably figured out in the AG classes my dad took as a WWII vet.
Can still remember loading corn and oats into burlap sacks into a trailer and hauling them to the elevator. Then bringing the feed home in the same sacks. I was too small to heft them around, but could hold them open while dad shoveled the corn and oats. Could drag the bags on the worn, polished floor at thr mill, but needed help loading them on the trailer. On a hot summer day, if my dad had a couple nickels, we might stop at the general store for a soda pop. Not often,snd a real treat!

Thinking the chicken feed also made with shelled corn as well. Cow feed was whole ear corn.

I remember when I was a kid, we would fill the sacks with cob corn and oats. About 3 corn to 1 oats and 1 bale of alfalfa for every 10 bags. We had minerals and a few other things that I don't remember added also. We also threw cob corn into the pens morning and night.

I remember seeing my grandfather mix fish in with the hog feed. He was a commercial fisherman on the Mississipi River. After dressing out a net full of fish and packing them on ice he would throw the fish heads and remains into the hog lot. You can't do that sort of thing anymore because of health regulations but boy did the coats on those hogs did they shine!

I only have a few hogs at a time also. I sometimes grind cob and all and sometimes I shell it first, they like the shelled first better.If you can add water or milk to make a slop they will eat either just the same. I add oats , hay , and concentrate to the mix if I have them available. I also feed them whatever I can scrounge,including table scraps, old donuts and bread from the bakery, waste produce from the grocery store, apples in the fall, grass clippings in the summer,extra stuff from the garden, and excess or old milk replacer from my dairy buddy. They also eat most weeds too if you pull them from around the farm. They eat dang near anything.

Do the cobs have any nutritional value for hogs, or are they just roughage? Sometimes sows need extra roughage when they are confined in farrowing crates. I doubt that roughage helps pigs, it probably just reduces their daily weight gain and reduces their feed efficiency.

Optimum feed rations are not difficult to work out, based on your main ingredients.

Cobs are short on energy for growing pigs, but are good for roughage for sows and boars. I think either will work except for some extra time to finnish for feeders. When I raised hogs in the 80s it was all shelled corn for feeders and some oats and hay or straw in the sow feed to keep them from getting constipated.

Go to the Co-op and ask their advice. When I grind I make two ton at a time (and grind frequently). I use a bale of alfalfa, 12 bags of concentrate 40 (Purina makes it - it is your minerals) and fill the rest of the grinder with half corn half milo. When milo was higher I used only corn. I don't use ear corn.

Tell them what you are putting in it and they will get you the right number of base bags to make the protien right. I do rotate the pens of feeders out through the edge of the pasture. They do well on the weeds and don't do much digging if only out for a day a week. The rest of the time they are in the regular hog pens.

You can also just throw the cob corn straight to them with out grinding, they are good at shelling it themselves. When I didn't have a sheller , the local feed mill would do it for me at 15 bucks a pick up load.

Never looked under tractor talk before, I usually read a participate on the John Deere forum. Anyhow I feed hogs for the freezer, outside, the old fashioned way, year round. My neighbor has a 95 gehl so I get this premix from the local mill and mix with corn. It's pretty self explanatory.

Lostant, IL? I lived there when I was a little kid. Send me an email.

Grinding cob corn the cobs always come out a different texture than the kernals. And it is very easy for the hogs to sort out the cobs to get the kernels as they will not eat the cob if there is any chance for then to be able to sort them out. We tried that only one time and actually lost quite a bit of the kernals as they would just push them along with the cob pieces out of the way to get to the kernels only.

Dont grind the cob too much roughage for hogs Check their droppings probably are hard and round should be real soft.

Well right or wrong my buddy and i only had ear corn and when we could afford to buy a dozen or so feeder pig to fatten we ground eared corn BUT thru a fine screen on our 355 New Holland grinder mixer . We would add in five hundred pounds of soy meal five hundred pounds of barley fifty pounds of mineral and around a 1000 pounds of eared corn . The running of ear corn thru the small screen would let you know just how much pony power your tractor had. Like i said was it the correct way to do hog feed ???? don't know but the meat was sure way better then Walley World imported from China pumped full of water meat.

Sure, you can feed them cob corn, and they"ll shell off the kernels, and take 8 months or more to reach market weight, instead of 5- 5 1/2 months on a ground meal and adequate protein ration. Plus add on a thicker layer of fat.