Agreed, for a small number of sows I would recommend AI. Figure the costs of maintaining a boar and how many sows he needs to be servicing to make it worth keeping him. Feed is the biggest cost since you already have the infrastructure setup. A boar on pasture is a lot less expensive than one on commercial feed in a stall. Figure out the costs for your situation.
A farmer I talked with this once said he figures that on a commercial grain diet with his boars and sows in stalls he has to be keeping a minimum of six sows per boar. Even then he liked to lease out his boars to help pay for them. We borrowed boars from him when we were first getting started and got our first breeding boar from him. This was a little risky but a way of getting going.
The big disadvantage to borrowing or lending boars is that sexual promiscuity is a great way to transmit disease. For this reason we have closed herds and cross back and forth between them. We get many requests for stud service but don't do it. We'll sell people young boars to get started with but we don't lend boars out and then take them back nor do we we have sows or gilts come here for breeding. The risk to our breeding herd is too great.
An exception could be if you are one of several small farmers in an area and then as a group you maintain a shared boar who makes his rounds visiting each farm twice a year for about a month. I have talked with one person who was part of a group who were doing this. If everyone is careful this could work well and keep down the costs.
One solution is to get a boar, have him do his breeding duties and then eat him. That way you get to have your stud and eat him too. I know of some people who've done that. We do it in effect since we test and cull boars, the only difference being they're from one of our herds rather than coming in from outside.
I figure on needing one boar per fifteen sows but I keep more than that as I like to have them working backup incase several sows all come into heat at once or the main boar is feeling down on a particular day. Kept together from an early age a pair of boars get along quite well. Be very cautious of mixing them later if they've grown apart.
Cheers
-Walter
Sugar Mountain Farm
in the mountains of Vermont
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Pros & Cons of Artificial Insemination
We decided to buy a boar this time around tho AI is not out of the question in the future. Because we are fairly new at raising pigs (we raised four gilts for the freezer in 2005) this time we decided to winter over our 2 gilts and breed them. This is uncharted territory for us but we have two kids in 4-H and have decided to just go for it wnting both show and freezer pigs. Our boar is a purebred Yorkshire, 5 mo. 110 lbs. It will be June before we can breed, we certainly have done this kind of backwards and the hard way, but originally we didn't plan to breed- It has been a wonderful family adventure this far!
