Raising pigs question

[Oldcountryboy]

Just wondering how folks of long ago went about raising pigs when feed stores were almost non-existant? My mom grew up in the 20's and 30's and she would talk about every fall of butchering pigs and making lard, soap, etc. but never had money. So if they didn't have money was there a trick into raising pigs that we don't know now days.

The last time I raised a pig it cost me a fortune to buy 50 pound sacks of feed. By the time butchering day came for that pig I could have boughten pork a lot cheaper at the grocery store.

I do know that she sayed that they would let the hogs run loose out in the woods and they only had a fence around the yard to keep the animals out. They had no fence around the property place.

Wonder how many acres of wooded land it would take to raise a couple or 3 pigs and not have to feed them till just a few weeks before butchering?

[wwubben]

Dad would slop the hogs twice a day.He had a 100 gallon water tank that he would put the skim milk from separating in and add oats to this.This mixture would soak until the next chore time.He would also throw them some ear corn.They were bedded with straw and got all kinds of scraps and leftovers from anything that was going on at the farm.My unk had a large oak woods.His hogs did very well every fall in the woods eating acorns.

[uncle Will in In.]

Every farmer around this area raised corn, wheat, oats, clover/timothy hay, and rotated their crops. The old rule of thumb was 10 bushels of corn would feed out one pig to over 200 lbs. No soybean meal was used, as no soybeans were raised for grain. Tankage could be bought at the elevator if you could afford it. That's cooked and dried animals that was produced at rendering plants that picked up dead livestock at farms. Most small farmers feed everything they raised to their livestock. Sometimes we ran out of corn for the hogs in the middle of the summer. We soaked wheat in a barrel and fed that until the new corn started to dent, then started jerking it for the hogs. If you have any ground that would grow corn, you could plant enough by hand to feed out a couple hogs. Another old rule of thumb was 100 ears of corn would make a bushel. Of course you have to take into account that some ears are three times bigger than other ears. The whole object of living out on a patch of ground is to produce feed for you and your livestock. Buying feed of any kind this year would break the bank in a hurry.

[orangehen]

The guy I get my milk from is raising a couple of pigs. I work at a restaurant, and the management is happy to save all food scraps (what I don't keep for dogs and cats) for him in 5-gallon buckets, which he picks up a couple of times a week and feed to his pigs and chickens. There are always a couple of buckets in the cold kitchen and dishwashing room, and all scraps go into them. It saves the restaurant on dumpster money, and everyone is satisfied.

This guy also takes 25 gallons or so of milk at a time to a retired cheesemaker who makes cheese for him and gives him all the whey from the cheese, and that also goes to the pigs and chickens.

If you lived near a small cheese factory, perhaps they could give you whey - it's great for pigs, chickens, whatever - even my little steer loves it!

My daughter has an arrangement with the management of a grocery store, too. They save all out-of-date produce and baked goods for her chickens, and she picks it up 2 or 3 times a week. Everything helps out when you're raising animals. (Too bad that "store" stuff might have chemicals on it, tho...)

[TedH71]

Feral hogs. Hunt 'em and process 'em. Save you the money and trouble of penning them. They're pretty much in almost every state now. Texas and Louisiana has the biggest populations. Missouri, Mississippi, Florida, Arkansas, etc. Not every state has them but now Colorado and Kansas are starting to experience the feral hog problem and Kansas is going around the issue rather badly banning hunting them unless you have written permission from the landowner THEN turn it in to the Kansas Livestock Comissioner to get a permit for that SPECIFIC land only! It only creates a hog heaven for them since KS is a heavy agricultural state.

[Beeman]

What's time to a hog? That's part of a Jerry Clower story but it applies as how fast do you need to fatten a hog for personal use, not production.
Old timers here would turn hogs out and they would feed on chestnuts.

[Devil Anse]

I raise my hawgs on ear corn and woodlots, feed meat scraps and produce from food stores, dayold bread, let them hawg down the garden in the fall, waiting on cold weather to butcher them

[ldc]

Nuts in woods in the fall is a traditional way to finish hogs by the time the cold/hard weather sets in, all over the world. ldc

[sammyd]

Skim milk, potatoes, corn, alfalfa hay.
Yeah they didn't need a feed store, they grew their own feed.

[FarmboyBill]

For X amount of hogs. Part of that depends on how many nut bearing trees you have in your woods, The safe rule is, the more acres for the hogs in woodlots, the better for all concerned. I have around 3 acres and a pond inside of that, with oak ahd hickory, and hackberry trees in it. Its real thick in some areas, and not so much in others, Grass grows on a bit of it, maybe a 1/4 acre

[sgl42]

i'd suggest reading www.sugarmtnfarm.com/blog/ which is written by a pig farmer in vermont, who also posts here under the name Highlands. Seems to have a lot of info about hogs. He raises his pigs on pasture, plus whey from a local cheese producer.

--sgl