I had heard you should feed cracked corn as the whole corn is not digested as well as the cracked. But I am getting cracked corn for $4.50/50lb bag and can get whole corn $7.00/100lb bag. Does anyone know if this is correct about the whole corn. The 100 lb whole corn is the cheapest I have found so far. Lynn
Hi Bunni, We feed our pigs whole corn soaked in water with a cup of trace minerals for each 100 pounds of corn. Only time I've seen much waste was when the corn didn't have time to soften up-not really waste as they will pick the corn out of the manure and eat it again. We where paying $7.50 for 50# of hog feed only to find out is was ground corn with trace minerals-pays to read the labels! Take care ,Daryll in NW FLA
Whichever one you use, whole or cracked, you need to soak it overnight before feeding. Dry corn is hard to digest. When I was feeding I would feed in the morning and immediately fill the bucket back up with corn and pour water in. Therefore it would soak approximately 24 hours before feed time again.
ive always fed whole corn, either in water or out, dry. I never seen any wastage, course I dont know whether the birds or squirrels got the wastage if there was any, but i assume that if there was any the pigs themselves found it. Ive never delibertly soaked corn, tho ive got nothing against it or those wh do it. I have ground and cracked corn and made a slop out of it in myyounger days, but not now. I wonder how those who use a big feeder with the lft lids for the pigs to raise would ad water to the corn they feed in those?
We were using regular hog feed. A neighboring farmer couldn't harvest a plot of corn because it was too wet to get his tractor in without getting stuck. He was planning to go in and chop it down when everything freezes, he told us to help ourselves and save him the time later. We've been going in and cutting it as we need it. We just throw the corn still on the cob in for the pigs. They are growing unbelievably fast and are very healthy. And the feed is free! It cost us nothing , but a little bit of work. We can go in and cut out enough to feed them for 5-6 days in about 35 minutes. Our pigs do get plenty of table scraps too. We did notice that if given the choice they will eat the whole corn first. When we bought a few bags of hog feed over the holidays to make sure they didn't run out, they left it set and ate the whole corn. We're hoping there is enough corn left to feed them the rest of the way out. That's real inexpensive meat for our family. If you see any corn still standing in the field you might consider talking to the farmer that owns it. I guess it wasn't that uncommon for the to be unable to harvest small plots of it because of all the rain this year.
