Plowing with pigs....and worm farming?

[Quail_Antwerp]

We definitely want hogs. Didn't think of using them for plowing, tho...was thinking hams, bacon, and lard for baking and soap or whatever. LOL

 

[mrs.puff]

We get a hog about every other year. We have a little pig house adjacent to our garden. After the garden is done, we let it in there and it tills that whole thing in about one day. After that initial tilling, the pig has to be fed, and he tends to mess up the place leaving corncobs everywhere. And he only really turds in one spot. We end up having to do quite a bit of cleaning up after he's gone, and have to re-till the garden over again. It does fertilize pretty good, but you might be better off keeping the hog in a separate enclosure, then just adding his turds to the garden. We don't have a separate place to put a hog though, so that garden plot is called the "pigpen garden".

PS: Ours eat scraps and corn, and I've never found them to taste funky. I think it's way better than storebought.

 

[miss_thenorth]

PS: Ours eat scraps and corn, and I've never found them to taste funky. I think it's way better than storebought.

Not funky--but different. If one is used to grocery store pork, slop fed pigs taste different. That's all I'm saying.

 

[FarmerChick]

missthenorth
you are so right about grain fed vs. scrap fed
of course even scrap fed home grown is better than store bought..LOL

but yes, what is fed will change the taste of the meat.

our hogs only get grain fed, nothing else. Having a business I can not risk funkier tasting meat.

So many people don't know this. That what goes in an animal is the taste that is acquired in the meats.

Those latino meal dishes like hogs that are fed only acorns. I can't remember the name of the ham....but it is a definite taste change cause of the diet of acorns and is actually more expensive cause of that food.

I love talking meat critters..LOL

 

[mrs.puff]

This is funny--b/c we fed our hog a lot of acorns (we had a bumper crop) and I ended up making a lot of pork carnitas out of the meat. Super delicious.

 

[enjoy the ride]

Beekissed- a good place to check for scraps is actually a food bank that carries produce. Around here, the grocery stores donate unsold produce to the food bank and other such places live the Mission and they have to give away what is not suitable for cooking. There is a lady here that picks up lots of this and drops it off all over the area. It goe to each person in turn to pick out what they want then gets delivered to organic farm to compost.
Not for plowing but for turning loose soil over- I saw this neat set up once where a chicken tractor with portable runs was set up in a garden. The runs were a bed wide. The tractor and runs were moved to cover either a run or an equally sized walkway. The tractor and runs were moved every few days to either allow the chickens access to a walkway to eat grass or a bed to dig in the soil or clean up. She had a regular system on wheels to do this.
Really effcient.

 

[TanksHill]

I think when I read Storey's guide to raising pigs they had about the same principal.. Have pigs near garden so you can give them scraps. They hang out and do their business. Then switch the two the following year. Garden where the pigs were and vice versa. Seems like it would work.

Please all of you expierenced pig people post pics. I would love to feed out one or two a year. But I am so afraid t commit.

 

[Beekissed]

Funky tasting meat from scraps: As these pigs will be hauled to the livestock market and sold to the highest bidder, I won't exactly be developing a customer base here. All folks who eat corn fed beef think grass fed beef taste "different" and not as good as what they are used to. Trust me, if you knew what they feed the pigs from the store, you might re-evaluate what you may be tasting! The pigs will be eating what humans put in their face every day without a second thought....but its not good enough for pigs????

Poop in one place and mess: As I will be running a tiller through these areas afterwards, I expect the "mess" will be well-tilled under and through, plus my freerangers will be giving it the once(or a hundred) over afterwards. They are very efficient little redistributors...you should see my mulch from last year! The whole idea of getting the pigs is so I won't HAVE to haul the manure from one place to another, let them turn out and eat all the grubs and weed roots and to turn a little profit at the end.

I'm not hoping to get rich on these pigs, just make my initial investment back and a little left over to bank for next year's feeders.

I'll be getting these feeders, if available, in Jan/Feb and will be hauling them to market in May. I don't plan to build extra structures in which to keep them full time, just a movable shelter to get in out of the rain/snow/sun.

You may ask yourself, "Why go to all this trouble for such little results?" Because I can! I want to try new things, things that have proven successful for other people and may be for me. I need more manure for my garden, which is big, than my flock of chicks can provide. Believe it or not, manure is hard to come by around here. Noone stables their horses here and all the available manure is spread back on fields. None of it goes to waste....OR to strange and weird women who are doing things noone else is doing in the area!

Pigs aren't as complicated as folks let on...I know...raised them before. Remember? I'm the original off-grid kid!

 

[me&thegals]

Good for you! My own little fantasy (since reading the Omnivore's Dilemma) is to have a Joel Salatin-style farm. Oh, joy! I will love to hear how the pigs work for you!

 

[FarmerChick]

oh I agree, hogs eat it all....free chow for them is the best way to be saving money....they will bring a nice price at market.

ours is .55 per lb. right now. so our 400 lb hogs are fetching about $220 or so. good profit

have you checked hog prices in the area near you? just wondering what it is your way about.