how much does it cost
 

I'm looking at buying pigs and feeding them out how much food do they eat from when they come off mom to butcher weight? I have no clue how much it might take

With an ideal feed conversion rate of 2:1, plan on feeding 460 pounds of feed to get a pig to 230 pound market weight. Call your local feed supplier for the cost of 460 pounds of pork grower.

wow, i must be doing something wrong! i takes me around 1,000 lbs of feed and 7-8 months. i use non medicated, no growth hormone feed. i use the old 1 pound of feed for every month they are old but i never feed more than 8 lbs per day.

What kind of pigs do you have? Some breeds just naturally grow slower.

Will these pigs be on pasture at all?

What breed of Pig?. How much space ? Any pasture ? Will the comm. feed be the only feed they get ? What weigh will the piglet be when you buy them ?

Genetics, even within breeds, makes a huge difference in growth rates and feed conversion. Cost from piglet to market also will vary tremendously with what you choose to feed and even the season of the year you raise the pigs in. It takes longer and more calories to get through the cold winter months than the balmy days of summer.

The general rule of thumb is about 700 to 800 lbs of commercial hog feed to get to 250 lbs in six months. Find out what your local hog feed costs. Then look into what alternatives you can feed starting with pasture. If you are going to feed the commercial feed, mighty expensive, then pasture the pigs during the first half of the day and only feed them the candy in the evening. This will dramatically lower the cost of pork production and improve the quality of the meat.

For what we do see:

Pigs | Sugar Mountain Farm

which discusses our pastured pig diet. Follow the links there for more detailed articles. We use zero commercial feed which helps cut the cost.

When you can buy butcher hogs for 50 cents a pound, $120 for a 240 pounder, that someone paid $50 as a 40 pound feeder, and it takes 600 pounds of feed to finish, and hog feed is 400 pound corn and 200 pounds soybean. So you need about 8 bushel of corn at $5.00 a bushel and 4 bushel soybean at $7.50 a bushel to break even.
Trouble is, corn’s at $7.50 and soybeans are currently at $12.50 and there’s no money for repairs or water or electricity to keep them warm.
Pig $50.00
Feed $120.00
Repairs, depreciation $20.
Electricity for heat and run water pump $20
Fuel to take them to Auction $20
Auctioneer’s fee $20.
This shows that you can buy a pig at auction, without any work for about half of what it costs you to raise and market it yourself.


But the choice is yours.

650lbs-800lbs of feed

But there is other ways around feeding hogs out then buying that much feed

We fed corn and milk to 4 pigs about a 1/4 acre of corn and milk every day (well a 1/4 acre total but a couple ears each day and 5 to 10 gallons of milk a day)

Ours were ready in 4 months and got them at 2 months old and the runt was 250ish and he was the lightest one and that was live weight

Total cost for all 4 was I think around $100 just in gas getting the milk everyday

Buying auction pigs is cheap yes but you get what you pay for

My experience is 700-800 pounds of feed.

What you want to do with them (and why) should also be considered along with the cost. If you have to buy feed, it's pretty much true that you can buy a finished hog cheaper than you can raise it yourself. If your intent is just to save money, just call around to your local butchers and find out when they have a deal. One shop here had a deal for $1.29 a pound, whole hog, cut and wrapped. Not a bad deal, but who knows where the hog came from.

If it's just for your consumption and you want better pork that was raised the way you want it, then you'll pay a little more, but it will be worth it. If you can do the butchering yourself, you'll save quite a bit of money.

If you want to sell them, you won't make much (if any) money unless you can get the feed bill down with quality alternative feed, and raise them in a way that they're worth more than a market hog. Then you have to find your own market for them: friends, coworkers, craigslist. You can make money, but not on a small scale through 'normal' market channels.

I already raise turkeys and cattle for my meat. I have pasture avalible, though i might have to fix some fence but that is already on the to do list. My family really wants me to add pork to the farm we can't find it at an auction here and craigslist people want about $2.00 a pound. The hog raiser is between 14-16 for a bag at the feed store.

I was burned by raising my own so this year i found a ffa group selling off pigs picked a sow up for 85cents a lb. She was very clean and well cared for plus tested. Im paying 45 cents a lb for processing.

So on average its $15 a bag for feed times 600lbs that's $180 worth of feed plus the price of the hog $50 your gonna be at $230 plus processing our is $.39 a lb and anything smoked $.69 a lb and anything extra it goes up from there

So a hanging weight of 200lbs its gonna be $78 plus kill fee ours is $40 so now your at $118 plus your $230 getting it there your at $348 for one pig and 4-6 months growing time

Now you could almost buy a whole 200lb hog raised by someone else for $2.00 a pound and spend $52 more dollars and not worry about raising it 4-6 months

Not trying to talk you out of it but with the feed being so high there is little to no room for a profit or big money saving UNLESS you get your feed bill down

Good luck

Cost me 60 cents a pound to put prime farm raised Yorkshire pork on my table.
I do my own butchering.
Pasture raised plus corn soy mineral mix feed. Good natural raised pork.
My butcher pigs weight is 300 lbs. at 6-7 mos.
Raising your own you know what you got.

I sell my butcher hogs for 1.50 lb. live weight.
Need a pig call me. :-)

Best,
Gerold.

[[[[[.......Buying auction pigs is cheap yes but you get what you pay for......]]]]]

When I am raising pork for my family, I buy half grown pigs. Someone else has paid to raise them to that size and I get them for a lot less than the cost (to me) of raising them to that size. Then I feed them up the rest of the way so that the meat is raised just like I want it.

It's not cheap meat, but it better than money can buy. I've bought pigs at the auction and always gotten excellent pigs. I buy the ones that have good conformation, look well cared for and healthy. They've always been good pigs.

You are correct. Buying at auction doesn't mean that they are bad. You should be able to judge a problem pig from a healthy one. Some folk raise livestock and market it at the local Livestock Auction. Others use the Auction as a place to dump culls.

The profit in raising commercial pigs is small. Keeping them a few weeks for a buyer to show up issn't wise. Often times, a pig farmer will market everything he couldn't sell on his own, at auction. The livestock auction is 120 miles from me. A few retired guys make money trucking cattle to auction. The local butcher has instructed them to pick up and finished pigs that sell under a specific price. Delivery is cheap, since they are mostly coming back empty.

Just a small clarification. There are NO growth hormones used in feeding commercial pork!!!!

In a back yard setting you will probably have a feed conversion ratio of around 2.75 to 3.0. So to get a pig to 250 lb you will need about 1/3 of a ton of feed which will cost about $125 for that pig.

Jim

I've never seen medacated hog feed. I guess it may exist. But I don't know of any commercial hog farmers that use it. Don't need to. I laugh every time I hear someone announce they refuse to feed their turkeys, chickens, rabbits, pigs any feed with growth hormones.

The public knows so little about the subject, it really is a dis-service to make such announcements as if theirs is different or better, when none of those animals get hormones, ever.

I'm glad Richmond knows what he's not feeding and I'm not picking on him or his comment. What I'm talking about is when people brag up their home raised whatever and make statements that make theirs sound "special" when what they are bragging about exists in the commercial product, too.

It is like telling folks that the hamburger you sell doesn't contain lungs and hooves. It is true, but leads folks to make the wrong assumption about all other hamburger. Some will just call this "marketing".

My feed store has medicated swine feed. The government is trying to ban the use of it and also any GH.
pGH and rpGH has been used in swine feed. Studies show about a 20% faster growth rate than without using it.

Yes, pGh and rpGh have been tested in pigs but the fact remains that NO growth hormones are used in feeding commercial market hogs.

There are three classes of feed grade antibiotics: Growth Promotion, Disease Prevention, and Disease Treatment.

Most of us in the commercial livestock industry believer Growth Promotional levels of Antibiotics will be illegal within the decade. We are fighting hard to keep disease treatment protocols of feed grade antibiotics.

We grow out 2 each year for our family's needs and butcher them ourselves. Our motivation is to have organic pork that is humanely raised - not having to load and truck them to a butcher takes a ton of stress out of their lives. We currently are experimenting with sprouting organic wheat and growing it till it has 4" green blades to see if we can increase the quality of feed while decreasing price.

Last year, when it was all said and done, our finished packaged pork averaged cost/lb was $2.27. That includes the cost of the freezer vacuum bags, all feed and straw, and the initial piglet purchase price. We're hoping this year to come in a bit lower since we had a huge garden with produce extras and now the sprouted wheat fodder.

The butchering is a ton of work for a week but we could not afford organic pork in this quantity otherwise.

[[[[.......Others use the Auction as a place to dump culls......]]]]]]

I have to confess I bought a young sow at auction that was the worst escape artist I've ever encountered. I had to retrieve her twice before I figured out how to keep her confined. So it wasn't hard to guess why she ended up at auction.

However, she was an excellent pig. Nice temperament, lovely conformation, and good feed conversion. She butchered out really nice. But darn, it was difficult to keep her home.

I have found by reading this forum that prices range drastically by region. I have raised eight pigs to market weight (250-300 lbs), sold one roaster (120 lbs) and have four more going to market in four weeks. and lost two piglets to pneumonia at about 14 weeks old. I have used a total of 12,450 lbs of feed so far and will need to buy about 500 more pounds to get these last four off. So just shy of 13,000 lbs for 12 and 1/2 pigs. Feed here in the North East is $13.19 per fifty lb bag. Piglets around here range from $75-$100 from a reputable back yard breeder or $90-$100 trucked in from Pennsylvania.
I track all of my expenses, I have spent $5,037.27 on piglets, feed, and regular maintenance for the fence and housing etc. When I am all done for the winter I will have about $5200 paid out. I estimate about $400 was lost in the pigs that died and the one that was sold as a roaster (She had a hernia so I sold her at a loss rather than risk losing her). I could have been around $400 per pig without the losses.
Unfortunately I quoted a price of $350 per pig to friends and family when feed was at $9.99 per 50 lbs so I am losing $$$ this year. Oh Well, live and learn.

Hey, don't feel bad. You are doing it "hobby size". Imagine the guys that depend on it for a living. The guys that are locked into contracts for a thousand or more finished hogs without feed adjustment clauses, are really taking it hard.

Interesting read! For us, we do it a little different. We grow our own red dent corn (12% protein instead of the 7-9% in most hybrid corn grown), supplement it with soybean meal bought in bulk, and vit/min mix added.
By growing our own corn, we figure a minimum profit of about $100 per pig sold at a market weight of 230-250 lbs.
In my opinion, raising your own higher protein corn is the ONLY way to raise pigs.
PS.. the average corn yields in the USA is 4.2 tons per acre, PLUS the fodder the pigs and cattle get from cleaning up while they fertilize the field, lol :pig:

What was the cost of the Red Dent Corn seed? Where did you get your seed ?

Best,
Gerold.

P.S. What would be the diff. in protein in Red Dent Corn compared to Yellow Dent Corn.
I know it would take around 25 lbs. of corn seed per/ac. Just trying to see what the cost would be for a high protein level compare to other types of corn.http://nutrition.ansci.illinois.edu/node/234 Good link on digestibility of amino acids in corn fed to pigs.

Saying "No Growth Hormones" is a perfectly valid thing to say. The USDA even has a line in their regulations covering this issue. You and I and the USDA know that growth hormones are not used in swine feeds but consumers aren't so sure.

The reason for specifying what you don't feed is that customers ask so often: "Do you feed hormones", "Do you feed antibiotics", "Do you feed medicated feeds", "Do you feed slaughter wastes".

Since customers are concerned about it the simplest thing is to spell out what one does feed and what one does not feed explicitly in writing on brochures. This saves time answering those questions for the people who would ask as well answering it for those people who are concerned but don't ask. This is efficient and transparent.