pigs.... any money to be made?

[JPiantedosi]

Let me preface this by saying I have no experience with pigs other than helping the neighbor cut his and move them around when I was a kid.

Over the last couple of months I have been considering buying a pig and turning it into sausage/pork burger. During this time I have seen young (10-20lb) pigs sell for what i consider decent money. We have an old feeder floor on the farm that I have looked over a couple times and seems to be in good shape and from conversations I"ve had with my father in law its big enough to feed out roughly 40head.

Now... Here is my question. Roughly what is the cost to feed a pig out to 200-250lbs? How long should it take to get them there? 6mos?

Is there enough money to be made on 40 head to justify that it would cost to raise them? Im am in a position where I have all the time in the world during the summer months and Im more or less looking for another project. Any thoughts?

Jim

[Otter]

I can understand having time and space and wanting to take on something, but 40 pigs is a pretty big undertaking if you've never raised pigs before.
I would think that if you put 40 weaners onto your barn floor, you'd have some losses from being bullied away from the feeders and such. I wouldn't be comfortable with it, but I haven't seen your set up.

As far as what it costs, that depends a lot. We broke down the math as far as we could break down every cost and when we buchered a pig found that our pork cost us $1.83 a pound, having it professionally butchered, which is cheaper then pretty cheap sausage and included our ham and bacon, so for us, it's well worth it. But we also had few enough pigs that extra milk, eggs, veggies and browse could be a noticeable part of our feed.
But with 40, you'd be buying feed in bulk, so it may even out.

I think a bigger question is who is buying this 40 head once they're fattened out? Is there a processing station near you you are planning to bring them too? Or are you relying heavily on your marketing skills? I'd check that out.
In my very local area, it's hard to sell pork and eggs. Everyone has some chickens and a pig, or a relative who fattens a pig. Thirty miles away you can sell pork. But there is no way that I can put up a local ad - I've got to get out of my area to even advertise. When we raised one to sell and one to eat, we ended up eating them both, and then I found out another locally interesting thing - people here will grab your ad and then wait a month to call you. A month after I started eating that pig I could have sold it a few times over.
At least it was one and not 40

I could probably put in a lot of work and build up to selling 40 head a year around here, but if I just jumped into it, I'd lose my shirt even if I could feed them all for free. So I think that is the bigger question.

[cooper101]

Start small. If you're just going to take them to an auction, you'll have a fun project, but you'll probably lose money. I'm not an industry expert, but I don't believe a small farm can profit acceptably selling into the mass market. You have to differentiate your product and find the buyer who wants it. I buy high-quality heritage pigs, raise them on pasture with a top-quality, varied diet, I give them belly rubs, sell direct to the consumer by the half or whole, slaughter in the pen to avoid stress on them, and use the best processor in the area. That story sells (itself, almost) and I make enough profit to make it worth my time. And I have a fun hobby. The pork is fantastic, and I get a lot of repeat and pass-along business. Grow a commodity and it will fetch commodity prices. Grow something special and you can make money.

It's very stressful to be getting close to butcher time and not have a freezer big enough to hold everything you haven't sold and nobody is calling you looking to buy. A waiting list is a FANTASTIC thing to have. Test the market waters unless you know for sure the demand is there.

To answer your original cost question, figure about 800 pounds of quality feed per pig to get them up to size. Any free food you can get helps, but day-old doughnuts and bread will make pigs that look like people who only eat day-old doughnuts and bread and the pork will suffer. 6 months is about average, but can depend on air temp, stress, feed quality, etc. Good food is key. Inexpensive or free GOOD food is great. Cheap crappy food will just cost you in the long run. Call around and see what mills in your area are charging for 18% and 14% hog grower. (18% protein up to 80 pounds or so, 14% after that.)

Young pigs at 10-20 pounds should be avoided, IMO, unless you know the source well. I usually try to start at at least 40-50 pounds. You'll pay a little more, but they're past the delicate stage by then and probably eating well, on solid food, etc. If they make it to 40 pounds, they're probably robust enough to survive. A 10 pound pig is a gamble.

[gerold]

Depends on where you live and if you could get someone to buy them before you buy them. Take a look at what the farm factories make per pig.
If you raise breeding stock you may be able to make a little money. with the price of feed high there is no way you could buy feed and come out ahead.
U.S. Slaughter prices last week was. 78-80 cents a lb.

[JPiantedosi]

Thanks y'all I imagine I'll just stick to sheep and cattle and buy a pig for the freezer.
Jim

[highlands]

I'll second the "start small" and grow slowly. Raise a few feeder weaner pigs for several years over the easy summer months to get your feet wet and find out if you like raising pigs and if you're good at it. This will give you a chance to setup infrastructure, learn the ropes and figure out your costs.

You will not likely make any money selling as commodities, to the local butcher or at auction.

You aren't likely to make much money with only 40 pigs. That's very small, too small to keep a steady supply to regular customers which is what it takes to earn much on pigs, or most anything. To make money it really helps to have regular repeat customers.

Producing the pigs is only part of the game. You need to sell them for enough above your cost to make a good profit so you can buy your next round of pigs, improve your facilities, pay yourself, your mortgage, your taxes and put away some for savings. Do a business plan before you invest in this. There are a lot of costs which people tend to miss. Add a healthy margin of error in addition to your own profit because it will cost more than you think. Check out what other people are selling for locally and then you can get an idea of if it is remotely possible to break even or come out ahead.

Do not try to compete with the CAFO's on price. They have their own processing, are buying feed in volume and deal in such volume that you'll never beat them. Instead focus on producing a premium product and selling directly. Stores and restaurants are looking for a steady supply of pork. They're not that interested in the occasional pig. Getting to that level takes years as you must develop not just the raising of the pigs but the marketing of the pork and weaner piglets if you sell those too.

One problem you'll hit is that if you have 40 pigs growing up as a cohort then you're going to have 40 ready for slaughter all at once which saturates your market and then you have nothing for the rest of the next six months. This hurts direct sales which is where the money is. This is why we stagger our pigs to slaughter each week.

We raise pigs on pasture for a living. We have no off farm jobs. This is what we do. We have about 400 pigs and that does yield a living. We do live very frugally. Don't expect to get rich quick. But we never starve as we always have food and that is a good thing. Our niche is delivering fresh pastured all naturally raised pork on a weekly basis to local stores, restaurants and individuals. We grew into this over a decade - it doesn't happen over night. Starting a new business typically takes a year or more before you get to profitability. Farming generally is on the longer end of that.

Once you get going you'll find that there are three production costs that make up the majority of your expenses:

1. Piglets - Figure about $50 to $200 depending on the quality and breed. Quality does make a big difference as better pigs will pasture more and grow faster reducing feed costs and time to market. This is why people pay for quality genetics over the auction house or factory culls. Auctions are the best place to pay the lowest price and get the lowest quality. Likewise they're the best place to get the lowest price when selling.

2. Feed - pigs eat about 800 lbs of feed to get to market if you're feeding commercial hog feed. Prices vary so check your local supply and buy in bulk. Figure on $240 to $650 depending on the quality and quantity of feed. Organic is very expensive. Look at how you can supplement or replace the expensive feed with things like pasture, vegetables and fruit you grow, food excesses, etc.

3. Processing - If you're selling direct then you'll probably be dealing with processing and it is a huge cost. Including transport its about $200 to $260 a pig depending on how much secondary processing is done for sausage, smoked hams, bacon, etc. Processing cost us 64% of every pig last year. This is why we're building our own on-farm USDA inspected meat processing facility.

All the other costs put together for infrastructure such as fencing and other things makes up a very distant 4th cost. The three above make up about 90% of the costs and each is about 1/3rd of the total costs of raising the pig. Getting each of these under control is what making money at farming is about. The more you do yourself, the more money stays in your pocket.

This does not include the startup cost of debt. Debt is a tool, use it wisely and watch out for it sucking up all your income.

You might find this article interesting:

http://sugarmtnfarm.com/2005/08/31/k...-pig-for-meat/

Cheers,

-Walter Jeffries
Sugar Mountain Farm
Pastured Pigs, Sheep & Kids
in the mountains of Vermont
http://SugarMtnFarm.com/

[FarmboyBill]

Time and space are the things to worry about. The #1 thing to worry about is the feed they eat. IF you can grow the feed, then id say get all 40. If NOT, Id say get 111, 3 three THREE and learn from it.

[bruceki]

Sell them before you buy them.

Call all of the custom slaughter guys in your areas, small meat shops or other places that use pigs, and see how many you can sell to them. If you can sell all 40, get them to front you the money for the pig purchase, and possibly the feed. If you get 40, don't sell 40. Sell 37. The other three are in case you have mortality or want a few pigs for friends and family.

If you can't sell them, don't buy them. I sell pigs full time, similar sort of busines to Walters. Since he doesn't feed commercial feed to his pigs, he's probably using my numbers in his estimates -- they're good. 800lbs per pig. Hog feed in this area is $540 a ton, so that ends up being about $170 a pig to bring it to market weight. If you can secure cheaper feed -- we pick up and feed 10 to 20 tons of produce a week to feed to my 500 pigs - that will really lower your costs.

You cannot raise pigs cheaper than folks sell them at the auction, you cannot beat a confinement operation on price. Don't try. Sell local, hand-raised, husbandry and quality.

[highlands]

No, bruce, I wasn't using any numbers from you. Years ago, about a decade now, we did buy feed so I'm familiar with that. That gives the feed for consumption and then I looked up the prices per unit at local suppliers. Anyone will need to lookup their own local prices since it does vary regionally. Buy in the largest quantity you can deal with to get the best feed prices since feed is such a large part of the cost of raising a pig.

You're completely right about don't try and compete with the commodities and auctions - focus on producing quality for your niche and price accordingly. Many people appreciate the better product and are willing to pay for quality.

[bigmudder77]

I can get feed in my area for $398 a ton at a feed mill almost $500 from the store

No huge discounts on bulk orders unless your doing the hauling your self and can get over 5 tons at a time

I have tons of math done for my area but again that's my area and its gonna be different than your area