Hickory-smoked bacon and ham, fresh, tasty pork, lard and sausages for the whole family—that’s what keeping a couple of pigs on your homestead can mean. A home-raised porker, 200 to 225 pounds when killed at optimum slaughter weight, will dress out at about 30 percent waste, which means that you will lose only 60 pounds as offal, hide and bone. Pigs are among the easiest animals to keep and feed.
It’s best to buy weaned, eight-week-old pigs, choosing the largest and strongest-looking animals in the litter. Buy pigs only from a reliable breeder who has wormed them and clipped their teeth. Select barrows—castrated males—weighing between 25 and 40 pounds, with short legs, compact shoulders and plump hams. Watch the ads in your local farm newspaper in fall and spring for feeder pigs.
Pig Housing
There are two methods of raising pigs—the pasture system and confinement. For one or two feeder pigs, the latter is probably better because it takes less of a capital outlay initially. A sanitary pigpen is easy to build, and most experiment stations have plans for these. Pigs are clean animals, and given a clean yard they will leave their droppings in one corner.
One good type of housing is a raised pen with a slatted floor for droppings and urine to fall through. The pen should be about eight feet wide. Wide spacing will cause his feet caught.
Surround this floor with strong fencing stakes driven deep into the ground at the sides. The slatted floor can be rinsed with a hose daily, and the area under the pen turned into a compost heap. If you cannot get a slight incline, so much the better—it’ll make cleaning easier. Be sure to provide shade inside the pen for the hot and cold weather. They sunburn and must have a refuge from direct sun, a trough for food and a constant supply of fresh water.
Pasture for Pigs
Good pasture can supply from 20 to 30 percent of the hog’s total feed requirements – clover and rape or mixtures of rapeoats are good hog pasture. Soybeans make good summer pasture with rye, ryegrass or winter barley later in the season. An acre of good forage along a supplementary grain ration will handle up to 20 pigs weighing 100 pounds a piece. A movable, easily constructed shade is in the pasture if no natural shade is available.
Pig Feeding
Young pigs weighing 22 pounds or less need a diet of 22 percent protein. Pigs weighing up to 77 pounds need 16 percent protein.
If a hog is confined, you can supply a large part of the feed for it from garden wastes—pea vines, cabbage leaves and the like—plus table scraps and leftover meat scraps. They will also eat leftover eggs, extra milk or whey from cheese making, alfalfa, comfrey, and Jerusalem artichokes. If pastured, hogs can even dig the artichokes by themselves.
Hogs can also be fed grains. Corn is generally preferred, and hogs eat it directly off the cob. Wheat is a good substitute, but should not be ground too finely because it forms dough balls in the mouth of the animal. In fact, corn and wheat can be fed with protein supplements as a complete diet. Grains such as sunflower seeds or millet should only make up 50 percent of the diet. Oats and potatoes are acceptable feeds, but should make up no more than one-third of the diet. Soybeans should not be fed to a hog, as they produce “soft” pork. So do peanuts, a popular feed in the South. Hogs on pasture can be allowed to forage, or you can cut forage and bring it to a confined animal.
A mineral supplement of two pounds of oyster shell or ground lime to two of bone meal and one of salt, fed one pound to every five pounds of feed, will take care of mineral needs. The supplement can be mixed with coarsely ground feed.
Pig Care
Pigs kept over winter need good shelter and adequate straw bedding. If you don’t have a small pen for the hogs, you can easily remodel a corner of an existing structure to do the job. During the winter, pigs must have green feed or vitamin and protein concentrates.
In addition, clean, fresh earth should always be available to pigs in confinement. Pigs will root in a trough of earth and get trace minerals unavailable to them when confined.