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[Tractor Seabee]

Hogs only smell when you keep them confined and/or give them a wallow. You will find they always defecate in a small area, easy to keep cleaned up. I raised breeder registered stock as a 4H project when a kid. For my age I made a whale of money. One big old sow dropped 8-10 pigs at a time and had teats for all, seldom lost one. Excess boars/barrows and ones not salable for breeders were sold for the meat market (find a specialty meat market as they pay more). There in Texas, like phoenix for me, they need shade in the summer. I set up concrete floor sheds with water misters draining the water away from their yard. You need to have separate farrowing sheds to keep the other hogs away from the little ones.

Ron

 

[STx]

Hogs only smell when you keep them confined and/or give them a wallow. You will find they always defecate in a small area, easy to keep cleaned up. I raised breeder registered stock as a 4H project when a kid. For my age I made a whale of money. One big old sow dropped 8-10 pigs at a time and had teats for all, seldom lost one. Excess boars/barrows and ones not salable for breeders were sold for the meat market (find a specialty meat market as they pay more). There in Texas, like phoenix for me, they need shade in the summer. I set up concrete floor sheds with water misters draining the water away from their yard. You need to have separate farrowing sheds to keep the other hogs away from the little ones.

Ron

I'm rotating these guys through pasture. Surprisingly to me, I'm learning they prefer my grass over corn. This is their current on, about 2,000 sq/ft. My long term plan is to perimeter fence 5 acres, divided into 10 pastures by hot wire with their shelter, water and grain feeder in the middle. Then I can close a gate and open another to rotate them without having to move everything. I want to keep them off concrete and raise them as naturally as possible. Happy pigs are tasty pigs.

 

[STx]

They came home from graduation yesterday and have moved on to freezer camp. We had fried pork chops for dinner last night and they were delicious!

 

[EddieWalker]

Friends raise pigs for the table and they are really tasty. I'm done with pigs, but I sure do enjoy what our friends share with us.

Was that all of your pigs or do you still have some alive?

 

[STx]

All I have right now is the little wild boar piglet. I'm going to go get a young Duroc gilt later this week though. She's going to be a breeder and has a good pedigree. I'm hoping to AI her off some quality boars and sell 4H and FFA pigs.

She was born 12/13 so is only a couple of months old. I think she looks really good for being so young.

 

[STx]

I also cleaned up the area the pigs were in last year. It was a total moonscape. I'm going to take advantage of the free fertilizer they left behind and put the garden here this year. Amazing how after a couple of hours on the tractor you'd never know it was a pig pasture.

 

[EddieWalker]

Are you going to do the AI yourself? If not, what do they charge to do that?

 

[STx]

Yes, pigs are pretty easy. Semen only needs to be stored around 65 degrees and when they go into standing heat they'll stand perfectly still once you straddle their back and sit down. Then it's just matter of inserting the straw, screwing into the cervix, attaching the semen bag and squeezing the contents into the pig.

There are a bunch of YouTube videos on it. Although I've never done it, I feel confident I can. Can't be that much more complicated than castrating a boar.