Feeding Milk

[Jennifer L.]

How much milk can you feed a pig? And how does it affect the meat? I am now going to have a lot of surplus milk and I started to think about getting a pig (s). If milk can be a large share of their diet it might be a good year for me to try them.

Thanks!

Jennifer

[highlands]

When free feeding hay during the winter and pasture during the summer with nothing else we find that the pigs drink 3.6 gallons of milk per hundred weight of pig. Similarly for whey. See this link:

http://sugarmtnfarm.com/blog/2007/04/big-whey-tank.html

Cheers

-Walter
Sugar Mountain Farm
in the mountains of Vermont
http://SugarMtnFarm.com/blog/
http://HollyGraphicArt.com/
http://NoNAIS.org

[Up North]

Originally Posted by Jennifer L.

How much milk can you feed a pig? And how does it affect the meat? I am now going to have a lot of surplus milk and I started to think about getting a pig (s). If milk can be a large share of their diet it might be a good year for me to try them.

Thanks!

Jennifer

Feeder pigs can drink a gallon/pig/day and eat some hay and a smidgen of grain with no adverse effects. More as they get bigger.

Raised with milk, hay or grass, and a small amount of grain will produce a sweet tender pork your customers will rave about.

"a good year for me to try them"...That depends on how you will market the finished butcher hog(s). If you have friends and neighbors that would buy a whole or half hog and pick up their pork at the locker - and you charge your cost plus a profit, then yes.
If you haul them to a sales barn and take the commercial market price you will probably have done a lot of pen building, hog sloppin', loading and hauling for breakeven or a small loss.
The sale barn market for butcher hogs is pathetic. A travesty.

[Jennifer L.]

Thanks, both of you.

I'd be raising one or two just for me and a friend. I've never had anything to do with pigs and wouldn't want to do more than just a couple to see how they work out. They are something I've always wanted to try, though, and now that there's the extra milk with nothing to do with it all, well, I might have to start looking around for some piglets.

I thought I had heard some folks say that too much milk made pale meat that wasn't as good for some reason. This was someone local to me and it was said in passing, and I didn't question it as at the time I hadn't been thinking too hard about raising any myself.

Jennifer

[highlands]

I've heard that about the soft meat but never seen it. Our pigs also get free feeding of pasture / hay. Perhaps that prevents it. Or maybe it is a myth.

[Up North]

If you have a herd of dairy cows, 2 feeder pigs can be raised out quite easily with almost no money spent. Leftover milk, manger sweepings containing grain, spilled haylage or corn silage do wonders. Do not be concerned if the pigs eat cow manure any chance they get. It is a source of minerals and undigested grain for a pig, and quite normal behavior.

[Jennifer L.]

I just have to make some decisions pretty fast, then. I sold the milkers this past week (no more milk inspector! Yes!) but kept all of the cows that weren't top drawer milkers for raising heifers and steers. But in the 20 cows that are left are about 6 cows that will be milking for quite a while if I keep milking them twice a day, and four or five months if it's only once a day. Buying calves is an option but one I'd rather not do, and I can only eat so much butter and cheese (although the whipped cream was pretty good yesterday!). Hence me thinking "pig" this year.

The comment I heard about milk making meat that's not so good came from someone who lived close to the milk plant and raised pigs mainly on leftover cottage cheese/sour cream, yogurt that was free for pigs. Don't know what else they may have been feeding.

This is really looking like something I should do this year. Thanks for the information.

Jennifer

[Up North]

If raised on 100% milk or dairy products,and no other feed, then yes pork will be pale, soft, and watery. We have always fed milk, hay/grass and a small amount of grain and had good results.
You will need to deworm the pigs. You will want to provide shade and a wallow when outside temps exceed 85F, 80F if it is extremely humid. Pigs cannot sweat so this is a must do. Also, grain fed to pigs cannot exceed 1% salt content.
If pigs are on pasture or have at least access to dirt they will root about and glean the iron and minerals they require. Otherwise you will have to purchase feeds containing these items.

Just some considerations. If the bulk of the dairy herd has been sold, perhaps that will leave some resources(your time, some pasture or pen areas, feed supplies) available to raise a batch of feeders without much fuss.

Hey, Holiday Turkeys, broiler chickens can utilize milk also. We raise, well, about as many as we can stand to butcher,...LOL!

[highlands]

Originally Posted by Jennifer L.

The comment I heard about milk making meat that's not so good came from someone who lived close to the milk plant and raised pigs mainly on leftover cottage cheese/sour cream, yogurt that was free for pigs. Don't know what else they may have been feeding.

We have several dairies and cheese makers near us where we get the excess milk, whey and cheese trim. We currently feed a few thousand gallons a day to our pigs. In addition to the whey, milk, cheese trim, yogurt, cottage cheese, etc they also get free access to pasture in the warm weather and hay in the winter. They eat a lot of hay, about a round bale per day. We also get small amounts of apple pomace from the cider mill (just started a few weeks ago), a little boiled barley from a local beer micro-brewery and occasionally left over bread from the local bakery in addition to veggies we grow and feeding out in the late fall through winter. The resulting pork is delicious.

I suspect that feeding only milk, or only anything, could cause issues. I have one customer who buys piglets from us that said he ended up with 4" thick back fat because he fed only milk this past year. On the above diet our pigs end up with 1" of back fat at slaughter age which is what I consider ideal. The fat tastes sweet and chefs rave about it. Something's right.

Cheers

-Walter
Sugar Mountain Farm
in the mountains of Vermont
http://SugarMtnFarm.com/blog/
http://HollyGraphicArt.com/
http://NoNAIS.org

[RedHogs]

You have to address you needs and goals.... dairy, green soybeans, canola mash, and high percentage DSG will alway give an increased fat and soft fat percentage.....If you are selling commercial this a major NO-NO as it will affect the cut-out percentage and cut you pay by as much as half......1" of backfat is fine for a home butcher hog, and is what I personally will kill at my farm, but the commercail value of such an animal is all but zero....these are are normally not marketed until past 400 lbs to sausage buyers who then pay a premium for fat....Thus some dairy farmers are buying summer cull sows and fattening on waste milk and getting more for the milk that way than selling it bulk.

I would also limit feed it to breeding animals as excess weight will cut down on many maternal and breeding traits.

[highlands]

RedHog, you make statements like that yet I'm selling pigs commercially every week. Obviously you're wrong. Maybe, although I'm starting to doubt it, you know your market - confinement hog factory farming - but you don't have a clue as to what I do and what makes success in my market. Your arrogance is mind-numbing. Often times I think you post simply to be argumentative.

[RedHogs]

excuse me, selling an a usda graded auction platform.

and didn't I say for my own use....I prefer more fat. The commercial hog buyers are in the business of buying pork....not fat

and didn't I say for sausage hogs you can't beat it....

My argumentative nature as you phase it is just an attemp to balance....the BS, yes - both of ours

atleast i can admit it and laugh about it.

You have carved out a niche, where you hogs are sold individually....This niche as I understand it requires and is your sole occupation....I don't have that kind of time and like 99% of the hog grown in america, my hogs as graded and sold accordingly....If I had unlimited dairy cows I would feed the fool out of it and sell my tops off as sausage hogs....

What makes me a factory farmer??? location, practices, size, mindset

[Jennifer L.]

Now, now, boys . . . I get a lot of good out of both of you, and I appreciate it, too!

My guess is most of the pigs raised around here on dairy farms for an individual farmer's freezer aren't pastured at all. Probably just penned up in an unused calf pen for the summer.

Up North, yup, my turkeys LOVE milk. The chunkier the better! The toms are always over there in a hurry when the pail gets set down outside of the milk room door. I haven't ever sold many holiday birds, a few every year is all. I can see there's money in it if you sell them to the right crowd, though.

When you feed milk at the rates you and Walter are talking about, how much grain do you supplement with it? I've got hay coming out of my ears here, so lots of hay for pigs, but how many pounds of feed would you be talking about when they have the protein and calories from milk?

Jennifer

[Rogo]

=== You will want to provide shade and a wallow when outside temps exceed 85F, 80F if it is extremely humid. Pigs cannot sweat so this is a must do. ===


I'm in the desert. Very low humidity. My pigs are in the water until the air temp goes below 60 degrees.

______________________

[RedHogs]

Red you are a selfadmitted failure

review my posts and show me that... I'm tired of your lying...I've got no use for liars

[Up North]

Originally Posted by Rogo

=== You will want to provide shade and a wallow when outside temps exceed 85F, 80F if it is extremely humid. Pigs cannot sweat so this is a must do. ===


I'm in the desert. Very low humidity. My pigs are in the water until the air temp goes below 60 degrees.

______________________

Rogo do you feel the pigs are in mortal danger down to 60F, or do you feel they are in the water until the air temp goes below 60F because it's comfy for them, and because they can?

[Up North]

Originally Posted by Jennifer L.

When you feed milk at the rates you and Walter are talking about, how much grain do you supplement with it?

Jennifer

Oh I suppose a pound of grain for every two-three gallons of milk, more or less. We feed by hand twice daily. If they don't clean up the grain within about 15 minutes we reduce the amount until they do. If they're hungry after the milk and grain they have hay to munch on.

[Jennifer L.]

Originally Posted by Up North

Oh I suppose a pound of grain for every two-three gallons of milk, more or less. We feed by hand twice daily. If they don't clean up the grain within about 15 minutes we reduce the amount until they do. If they're hungry after the milk and grain they have hay to munch on.

Thanks. Gosh, I woke up in the night thinking about where I could pasture pigs on this place. If I can turn hay into milk and turn that into pork without spending a whole lot on grain (one reason why the milkers went) then it starts to really look good.

Thanks, everyone who responded to my question! I might come up with some others down the road.

Jennifer

[highlands]

Jennifer,

We haven't found it to be necessary to supplement with grain. We get excellent growth and fabulous taste with just pasture/hay and dairy. I have raised many groups of pigs on just that and they grow about as fast as if grain fed but taste much better. This was established using double-blind testing from the same genetic stock (our herd). Pasture and dairy really do produce a superior pork. The taste is part of why customers pay a premium. We sell to a large number of restaurants and stores and they wouldn't keep buying if it wasn't so good.

When available we supplement our pigs diet with other things, most of which we produce, especially in the late fall and winter when the pasture is no longer available with its variety of foods. It is very easy to grow pumpkins, squashes, beets, turnips, sunflowers and other foods. The pigs do the tilling. The chickens follow and do weeding. I plant. We harvest what we want for our family and then send the livestock in to harvest their own food in sections just like doing intensive rotational grazing in the summer. When they get into the beets its purple snow!

Occasionally we get boiled barley from a local micro-brewery of beer. Perhaps five to 20 gallons - spread that out over 200 pigs and it isn't much - more a treat than anything else. We also get a little excess bread from the local bakery but again it is a small amount spread out over a large number of pigs. It is very useful for loading time when we take pigs to market each week.

So in a word, no, you don't need any grain to raise pigs. Just hay/pasture and dairy will do the job and provide an excellent diet. I tend to stay away from corn/soy and I buy no commercial feed. Chefs at the restaurants that buy our pork tell me that the corn yellows the fat and gives it a poorer taste.

Lots of ways work. Pasturing is certainly the least expensive. Adding dairy supplements the pasture proteins that are low. Use the resources you easily have. Pigs are versatile hardy animals that will thrive under many conditions. There are quite a few articles on my blog (see below) which detail the amounts we have found of various things for feeding the pigs as well as lots of other articles about pigs in general.

On the issue of selling at auction and into the wholesale distribution, I would suggest not doing so. That is the best way to get the lowest possible price. Selling directly will get you a lot more per pig and per pound. The key is to produce a premium product (after all that is what you want to eat too, right?) and find your market. Don't bother trying to compete with the likes of Smithfield or other factory farms that churn out garbage under subsidies - no need to lose $5 a head and try to make it up in volume as the old joke goes.

Cheers

-Walter
Sugar Mountain Farm
in the mountains of Vermont
http://SugarMtnFarm.com/blog/
http://HollyGraphicArt.com/
http://NoNAIS.org

RedHog, you're a clueless idiot who admits you like promoting BS so you can laugh at it. You are not even a factory farmer, you hire other people to do your work as you have said repeatedly. You have also pointed out repeatedly on other posts that you are really a real estate agent and you use the farming to get tax breaks on the land and then develop the land anyways. You are a beautiful example of what is wrong with modern 'farming', subsidies and greed. Your spreading of disinformation is not funny. You're simply lame. You may never learn. I'll endeavor to ignore you. One of these days you'll mess with the wrong person in the real world instead of here where you hide behind an alias. That experience will hopefully fix you. Until you go honest, stop hiding your identity and stop spouting nonsense you aren't worth talking with. It would be good if you stopped telling lies but I don't hold any great hopes on that. Cheerio.

[Up North]

The issue of butcher hogs getting too fatty on a homestead operation does not need to be an issue. You lay eyes on the hogs every day because you are the one doing the feeding. If they are getting fatter than you like from the milk, you merely reduce the accompanying grain and increase the amount of high protien dairy hay(alfalfa or clover or mixed hay containing these) and they will rapidly become leaner hogs. And vice versa.
Pigs are very versatile and can be raised in many ways. That does not necessarily make one way right and another wrong. As Walter has noted in some of his past posts, some buyers prefer a heavy hog of 350-400 pounds with some fat. They want the Lard for Soapmaking and Pie Crusts. Others prefer a leaner hog in the 240-250- pound size. Both can be sold at a profit.

For the Homestead operation, the key is to find ventures that *Dovetail* together and are complementary in real economic terms. We have found that Dairy cows and pigs are one such complementary symbiosis.