OT- feeding out a hog, or two.

I want to raise a couple or 3 pigs to feed out to butcher. Partly for the meat, partly for the kids to have another learning experience. I would like to get the piggies smaller enough where the kids still will think they are "cute" and can make them friendly. What age would that be, and what will they cost me. Also, approximatly how much corn will it take to get them to that 240-260 butcher weight? How big of pen do they need. Any advice here?

Dave,

critters always do better when there are more than one...so 2 or 3 would be a minimum to get. How much feed is a good question....I never paid much attention.....I just fed them. Hogs need plenty of water...an absolute must. They also need some shade or a wallow....they don't sweat and stay cool by laying in a wallow or the shade. I strongly urge you to not allow the kids to get attached to anything you plan on butchering.....they will never be able to eat poor old 'Arnold' or whatever they name them. For kids first critters, I'd suggest getting them chickens. They are easy to care for, they can make pets of the hens, easy for them to feed and gather the eggs.

Well, we have 15,000 chickens. I understand what your saying about the attachment thing. They each raised a bottle calf, that were just sold a couple months ago at 1000#'s. They all were expecting that one of them would be in their taco's one day, but I sold them because I thought i had more meat than I actually did. The youngest is planning on buying 2 calves this spring with some of the money he got from his steer. The emotional attachment will go away at the scent or smoked ribs on the grill, or for the younger one, that first cheddar brat. They are used to critters becoming lunch since they were still in diapers. we ate their rabbits, chickens, duck's, pheasants, they know it's a part of life. I just want them to enjoy small farm life like I did as a youth.

If you want the kids to have a "learning experience" don't buy "cute" pigs. Otherwise, YOU will have the learning experience of trying to slaughter "their pets". To answer your questions, I'd buy 45-50 pound feeder pigs. You'll need about 200 sq ft of space (preferably ON CONCRETE)because they WILL tear up everything. It will take 9-10 bushel of corn per pig plus 100 pounds of supplement to get them to 240-270 pounds. It will take approximately 75 days to finish them. Don't forget, hogs REALLY stink. Are you REAL sure about this?

Well, we have lots of chickens, about a dozen cattle already. The next venture was either pigs( which we can eat), goats or sheep. The want something THEY can build the shelter and fence for take care all by themselves. I figure pigs were the lesser of three hassles. I've heard bad things about goats, and dont know what to do with a sheep.

We used to have beef cattle and had the local meat cutter come to the farm to dress them out. He then took the halves to his plant to hang then cut. My daughters never batted an eye when we did this they were keen to watch the shooting (with ears covered expectantly) and then they would watch the heart still quivering and squeeze the spongy lungs when the steer was opened up. They understood from the begining what was in store for the cute little calves. Go for it! Teach 'em to deal with it.

Find a shaded area preferably on concrete. Use four "hog panels" and make a pen. Use posts every four ft around it. Start them out on a 16% protein ration and feed that for two weeks. Lower the protein to a 14% and finish them out on that. You're gonna need a good scoop shovel. Keep track of the days on feed. It is hard for an untrained eye to tell the weight of a hog. After 75 days, they should weigh 240-270. I won't miss it by more than 10 pounds. BTDT probably 60,000 times.........fed 2-4000 hogs each year for 20 years. My, I hate hogs.

That is the best picture I have ever seen!!! I am really hungry now.... I raise about 10 pigs at a time and I love it. The ones I have now are ready for butcher but I have raised them through the winter months here in minnesota. I dont think I will do that again. I went through 3 ton of feed for those 8 pigs. Just remember the colder it is the more they eat. We have had a lot of below -0 days this year and some below -20.

You know,

Those food pictures you post ain"t very nice. Now all I got is famous daves on the brain.

You could always skip the hogs and get the kids a couple of horses They"re a real money maker..

Dave,

I've raised hogs for a few years now. 40-50 lbs. is a good starting weight but it takes more like 16 week to get to buthering weight on corn and supplements. I usually go with a 4 parts corn to 1 part supplement which gives you around 15% protein.When I back figure my usage I have about 6 bushels of corn per hog. Raised on concrete I'll put anywhere from 3 to 8 in my pens that are 6 feet by 20 and have no problems. I do try to fork out the pens once a week when I have more in the pens. I've named my pigs if they are unusual and so have my kids, but we all started with the idea they a food just like cupcakes (sounds cute but they're good to eat). Make sure you get them nnalert most sale house or farms selling feeder will have the vaccines for the problem in your area. We have a few auction barns around, I can pick up feeder for around $25.00 to $35.00 each with thier shots.

I wouldn't go that far...depends on the kids. Last summer we raised 5 pigs (butched in 2 rounds). The first 2 to go to butcher were Fat Joe and Tatzuki (Don't ask, I don't know where that came from). Anyway, after we got the pork back, our daughter (4) was sitting there eating and out of no where says "MMMM, Tatzuki tastes goooddd..." No hesitation on her part about eating a named pig.

Aw,,,man that is enough to make eat my computer screen !!!!

We raise 2-3 litters a year. Size of pen depends. If they're on soil, they will tear it up and leave it like the moon. They'll dig 2 ft deep just for the fun of it. My reading suggests that despite the mess they make, it is good for pigs to have dirt in the diet- get minerals that way. We built 2 wooden sheds (1 would be plenty for just a couple) 8'X8'. Basically 4X4s in a square as a base, (2) 4X8 sheets of T-111 for a roof (pitched to shed water), and frame out walls and cover with T-111. We left the middle 1/2 of the tallest wall open for a doorway. We use 2 strands of electric fence and put these sheds inside for shelter. we can pick up the sheds with the pallet forks on the skid steer and take them wherever we want. In the winter we get a major mud situation so what I did this year, and seemed to work pretty well so far, is to dump about 1 foot deep of shade tree leaves over the course of a few weeks in the fall. It gets trampled and packed and although it's wet, it isn't a bog.
Another note, pigs will overturn any feed or water bucket that they can. So you'll either end up just dumping the feed on the ground- they'll eat it just fine, just waste some-or find a pretty heavy feeder.
We don't do any vaccinations, tooth clipping, tail docking, etc. Just castration. We haven't had a problem. Of course we're the only ones in probably 25 miles that have pigs.

Keeping pigs on concrete is not natural for them they are designed to root, I know they cause more problems were they root, but you should really try to keep them outside in there natural environment, I would also think the meat would be better. My friend gives his pigs feed, corn and all kinds of spoiled milk, icecream and bread, veggies ect. just my thoughts. j

We use a 65/35 ground corn/soybean meal mix with some hog mineral but I don't remember how much we used but it took about 5 months to feed them out. Dad also went to the bakery and would get a rack of spoiled goods for $10 or so and feed them some of that everyday. We got them around 50 lbs and fed them up to 260ish. We had 3 in a 12x10 pen on concrete and we would moved them around the barn to root up pens before we hauled the manure out.

Just to keep things straight, our first calf we raised was named "Roast Beef". After that they were just named alphabetically.

Best advice is not to let them free range unless you are willing to have the ground tore up. Might be able to control this by eliminating any grubs or other food under the sod. Probably will also result in having a "hog wallow" Dad let the sows run free range and they made a mess everywhere, although a few hog rings "every now and then" would slow them down for a few days. Need corn/milo and a protein supplement such as soybean meal, plus a few minerals. Could go the easy route and purchase a complete feed in bags. But this is expensive and you will not save any money. They love to eat table scraps and this would help slightly on feed costs. I would buy them after three days or within a week after they have been weaned. They will still be small/cute and already on full feed. Be sure that if male, they have been castrated.