Discussion
Since three PHers are having varying amounts of meat from the pigs we collected from the breeder this weekend, I thought they and the rest of the Food & Drink forum might like to see them go from weaner to plate, 'live' on a thread here.
I hope it might give a pretty good insight into what's involved in raising pigs to meat.
We do this in order to keep pork in the freezer for ourselves year round, so it's not a large scale commercial operation, we want decent meat, compassionately reared and are happy to make just enough to pay for the upkeep of a small number of weaners for that purpose.
So this weekend, we went off to the breeders for 3 Gloucester Old Spot weaners.
As you can probably tell from his face, pigs hate being picked up, they sound like they're having some unspeakable act performed on them but it's the easiest way to get them from their pen to the trailer, this is the breeder and her husband getting the first one out.
As soon as they're back on the floor, they act as if nothing has happened and soon all 3 were in the trailer and ready to go home with us (once we'd filled out the Defra movement licence).
Once back at ours, they were ready to go into the wood. For the first few days we have them in a little pen round the house, this is for 2 reasons;
They have spent their first 8 weeks of life in a small concrete yard, so to settle them we give them a similar size enclosure.
If they have any disease, they don't spread it through the whole 2 acre wood.
As soon as they were in the enclosure, they got their noses into the earth and started rooting - they've never been on anything but concrete up to now but immediately they're digging up roots and tubers to eat.....
...and it's unlikely they'll ever be clean again
We're lucky in that we get a lot of spoiled fruit and veg from the local greengrocer, pigs will eat just about anything put in front of them except citrus fruit and potatoes (bad for their digestion). Legally we're no longer allowed to give them any domestic food waste (due to the risk of foot and mouth), however stuff that's not so spoiled has been known to go in the other direction though (we have gallons of roasted pepper and tomato soup in the freezer).
The fruit and veg is mixed with some of the weaner food the breeder gave us and (for the moment) split into individual portions, this is last night's piggy portion for one;
We'll keep them on seperate troughs for a few days to make sure they all get a decent amount of food, there's inevitably one dominant pig who gets more and chases the others off, so we can work out which one he is and make sure the less dominant ones get something. To be honest though, once they get the run of the 2 acre wood, they'll get an awful lot of their diet from foraging.
They seem to like the plums we gave them;
Then, once feeding time is over, they take themselves off to bed;
I hope this is of interest, hopefully we can keep it going until the PHers in question take delivery and show us some of the tasty things they've made.
Feel free to ask any questions, I'll answer them if I can, and I'll try and keep the thread updated with pictures as they grow.
I hope it might give a pretty good insight into what's involved in raising pigs to meat.
We do this in order to keep pork in the freezer for ourselves year round, so it's not a large scale commercial operation, we want decent meat, compassionately reared and are happy to make just enough to pay for the upkeep of a small number of weaners for that purpose.
So this weekend, we went off to the breeders for 3 Gloucester Old Spot weaners.
As you can probably tell from his face, pigs hate being picked up, they sound like they're having some unspeakable act performed on them but it's the easiest way to get them from their pen to the trailer, this is the breeder and her husband getting the first one out.
As soon as they're back on the floor, they act as if nothing has happened and soon all 3 were in the trailer and ready to go home with us (once we'd filled out the Defra movement licence).
Once back at ours, they were ready to go into the wood. For the first few days we have them in a little pen round the house, this is for 2 reasons;
They have spent their first 8 weeks of life in a small concrete yard, so to settle them we give them a similar size enclosure.
If they have any disease, they don't spread it through the whole 2 acre wood.
As soon as they were in the enclosure, they got their noses into the earth and started rooting - they've never been on anything but concrete up to now but immediately they're digging up roots and tubers to eat.....
...and it's unlikely they'll ever be clean again
We're lucky in that we get a lot of spoiled fruit and veg from the local greengrocer, pigs will eat just about anything put in front of them except citrus fruit and potatoes (bad for their digestion). Legally we're no longer allowed to give them any domestic food waste (due to the risk of foot and mouth), however stuff that's not so spoiled has been known to go in the other direction though (we have gallons of roasted pepper and tomato soup in the freezer).
The fruit and veg is mixed with some of the weaner food the breeder gave us and (for the moment) split into individual portions, this is last night's piggy portion for one;
We'll keep them on seperate troughs for a few days to make sure they all get a decent amount of food, there's inevitably one dominant pig who gets more and chases the others off, so we can work out which one he is and make sure the less dominant ones get something. To be honest though, once they get the run of the 2 acre wood, they'll get an awful lot of their diet from foraging.
They seem to like the plums we gave them;
Then, once feeding time is over, they take themselves off to bed;
I hope this is of interest, hopefully we can keep it going until the PHers in question take delivery and show us some of the tasty things they've made.
Feel free to ask any questions, I'll answer them if I can, and I'll try and keep the thread updated with pictures as they grow.
Fittster said:
How do you keep them in the wood? Surely as they get older you'll need a very big fence to contain them.
One side of the wood is stock fenced, so a run of barbed wire along the base of the fence is all that's required (pigs aren't endowed with much jumping or climbing ability, so it's the burrowing you need to control, barbed wire is enough to give them a reminder where to stop without injuring them).The rest of the wood we've done with 3 strands of 'hot wire' electric fencing, again enough to put them off going near, but not enough to hurt them. The river also borders the wood, so if they ever did get out, they either have to come through our paddock (where I hope we'd spot them) or swim (I've confiscated their Speedos).
RacingPete said:
What is the time scale from these little ones running in the woods till they get put on a plate?
Our pigs reach pork weight between 26 and 30 weeks (compared with around half that for some commercial pork) and they're 8 weeks now, so they should be ready July/Aug time.Since they're boars we don't want to run them on much past that, as the meat can end up with 'boar taint', a slightly unpleasant gamey taste due to the testosterone.
Our last lot were at top weight by 26 weeks, thanks to the brambles, nettles and roots they gorged on when they were young, so I suspect these will be too, but we'll send them when they're ready, regardless of how long it takes.
We were planning a couple of gilts (girls) to run on to bacon (this takes anything between 36 and 46 weeks), but the breeder lost a breeding sow last week and can only sell us one of her gilts now, meaning we'd have to look elsewhere for a companion for her (pigs don't like being kept alone, they need at least one other for company) which just seemed like too much hassle. We may well get a couple of gilts later in the year though.
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