in all the posts that I read , everyone says pigs will eat most anything . Well heres my problem . My 2 pigs are finicky! , and Im wondering if anyone else has the same problem . I feed them commerical mixed ground food for pigs and I also give them lots of stuff from the garden . Heres what Ive noticed . Anything soft that I give them , tomatoes , over riped bananas , bread , they love . But anything that isnt soft ,they snub . For instints , overgrown cucumbers they love , but dont eat the skin , potatoes , no way , and listen to this . I had a large area in the garden with nothing to put in so I decided to grow lots of extra green beans in that area , thinking pig food ! well , if I throw the whole plant in there they eat the leaves , but wont touch the beans or plant at all . Ive picked the beans and put them in the feed trough and , no way , they dont eat them . Ive tryed to cut the beans up and mixing them in the commerical feed and they spit them out as they eat there corn mix . The only way they seem to gobble them up is to cook the beans first , which makes them soft . then and only then do they seem to go crazy over them . which is making me think that these pigs are finicky and wont eat nothing but softer food . Is this wierd or are my pigs wierd ? Or is it that maybe Im the fault by maybe over feeding them the commerical feed and by doing so the pigs are just being over selective on what they eat ? Any thoughts to this ?
My pigs won't eat oranges or raw corn When I feed they go from bowl to bowl (each has her own bowl) to inspect for tasty morsels before they settle down to eat. My experience is that anything cooked is tastier for them. They may not eat raw ears of corn but they will eat them cooked. I've heard others say they feed the scraps first because their pigs won't eat them otherwise.
My pigs are somewhat picky. I planted beets, even tho I do not like them myself, because I thought they would make good cheap pig food. They will not eat them raw, and I do not have time to cook beets for the pigs, so I am giving them away. I threw them some apples that fell on the ground, partially rotten, and they did not eat them. They love grass and other green stuff that I cut for them.
Pigs are just like me. I prefer cooked food that suits my taste. However when I am really hungry, which is seldom, I can eat all maner of raw tasteless (compared to apple pie) food. Don't give them the boughten stuff until they eat a reasonable amount of your home grown health foods. Remember when Mom said, "You don't get any desert until you clean up your plate!" Then you squealed like a little pig. LOL
My grandfather used to soak bags of corn in water in a fifty gallon drum,until it swelled up and was soft.Smelled sowered to me,as i recall.But the pigs just loved it.As i recall thats all they got as far as normal food.Maybe some table scraps every now and then. But anyway this must have been why he soaked it.To soften it.Humm never thought about it before. Anyone else ever heard of or done this before? I am thinking about raising a few pigs when i get some land.Might as well start taking notes.
When I wa a kid, we always ran out of ear corn in the crib around the middle of the summer. We took the ear corn and had it ground first then put it in the barrel till the next feeding. We didn't have a sheller, so we couldn't soak the grains. We threshed our wheat around the first of August. We put wheat in the barrel and soaked it till the next feeding (twice daily) Around the first of Sept. we started jerking ears of field corn for the hogs. They loved them, and ate them with the green shucks still on them. They learned how to put one foot on the ear and pull the shucks off with their teeth. Every Sat, after school started right after Labor day. was corn shucking day. We'd take the team and wagon out right after we finished milking and shuck till noon. It seemed strange to me that no mater how big a load we shucked, the wagon always became empty the next Saturday. Sometimes when my stepdad had a couple bucks to blow, he would buy a hundred pound bag of tankage to add a little to the slop barrel. Sort of an early time SLOP HELPER.
