The 5 Ways We Feed Our Pigs
There is more ways to feed a pig then just going to the store and buying a bag of feed with a pig's face on it. We use about 5 different ways to feed our pigs. This helps cut back our feed cost and the pigs like the diversity.
You see the squash and some of the tomatoes in the picture above? That's One of the ways we feed our pigs. Give them the excess produce we grow on the farm.
The fruit in the first picture and the stuff in the refrigerator is another way we feed our pigs.
I have to give credit where credit is due it was my mom's idea to go around to grocery stores and asked if we could pick up the stuff they're going to throw away. We got some no's but we got some yeses!
So now we pick up at a few different grocery stores once or twice a week. Depending on how much they have to throw away. This bread is another example of what we will get from the grocery stores to feed to our pigs. Some weeks we can get up to 20 lb of bread.
We have a lot of nut trees on our property. Big oak trees that drop acorns, black walnut trees, wild pecan and one I haven't been able to identify yet but the pigs love it.
If I'm not able to move the pigs where the nuts are I will go out and collect a few five gallon buckets worth. With the amount of nuts that are on the ground it doesn't take me long to fill the buckets up.
My personal favorite way to feed our pigs is to rotationally graze them. Pigs can get a lot of food and minerals off the land along with well needed exercise to build muscles.
Pigs will eat almost any type of plant matter, roots bugs and grubs. If you need an area cleared, put a few pigs in it. They will take care of it for you. Because pigs like to have their nose in the ground they pick up parasites. So I put diatomaceous earth in their store-bought feed to keep them cleaned out.
The final way we feed our pigs is with some store-bought feed. We buy them whole corn, a 12% feed, and a specific feed for Hogs that's about 16% protein.
Our store bought feed cost is the most expensive during winter. But with thinking outside the box and diversifying you can greatly lower your feed cost throughout the year.
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Great ideas. I didn't know pigs grazed. That's awesome.
Thank you. The love to graze.👍
When I used to work at a health food store, we had a lady come to pick up any old produce for her farm. We kept a bin in the cooler for her and she'd pick it up every week or two. It's a great way for stores to reduce waste, too! More of them should offer such options.
Thank you @phoenixwren. I agree more stores should do this.😀