Keeping a pigis so natural to homesteading that it ’s arduous to imagine farming without one . All - year our backbreaking work is give rise so many bare nutrient that just beg to be turned into bacon , blimp and pork chop . From watermelon vine vine to waste hay , from cabbage leaves to canning scraps , from tomato skins to table leavings — just about every aspect of homesteading seems to generate some kind of organic matter that will make a perfect repast for a pig !
But there ’s a incumbrance : For the homesteader whose farm - raise nutrient stream vary with the cycles of the twelvemonth , ensure there is a pig on the premises at the right times can be a challenge . You ca n’t just pick up a piglet off the shelf at the local Piggly Wiggly .
Whatever your local reservoir of baby pig may be , it may not be ready when you are . Unless , of form , you keep your own breeding sow and boar , to leave you with piglet on a steady basis .
hold back spawn fund is one way to make trusted the farm always has pig when it has hog food available . But the homesteader or small sodbuster definitely call for to do some accounting before adding a mama and dad pig to the payroll .
Pork Chops or Piglets?
We think almost any smallholding raise enough spare nutrients of various kinds to abide at least one pig per year . Consider the following , which come on pretty on a regular basis throughout the spring , summer and fall on most farms :
If you keep a dairy farm animal — whether goat , moo-cow or sheep — you normally end up with some nimiety milk , buttermilk or whey to boost the protein in the pig bucket . These farm - produced nutrient can go most or all of the way to providing all the solid food a hog needs to go from weaning to slaughter weight in six to 10 month .
But add a sow to the premix , allow alone a boar , and they ’ll burn through those large calorie almost as fast as you could hale them to the b . you’re able to terminate up with a thermic deficit before ever you add a individual hog for the freezer .
maintain breeding stock mean you have mouth to tip — adult mouths , with big appetites—12 calendar month of the year . You wo n’t eat up these animals for a long prison term , but they do need constant feed so as to keep going .
So much for turn this summer ’s garden surplus into next winter ’s bacon ! Unless you have a whole flock of excess , all your waste matter goes to fuel your shote - makers , not your baconers .
Read more : Interested in spring shote ? Here ’s how to find oneself and buy some of your own .
Extra Mouths
Of of course , you could always buy feed for the extra appetite . But late experience taught all of us that our origin of purchased calories — whether favorite food , baby pattern or even our own grocery — are not necessarily as reliable as we ’ve come to expect .
Even when provender is available , prices have been run up — and up and up . So it ’s estimable , when we add more back talk to the farm , to make certain we know how we ’ll feed them ( and what that ’s go to cost ) and whether we like the rate of exchange .
Remember also that parent pigs meanlotsof baby pigs , even as many as a dozen or more at a time . And pigs have a unretentive maternity period . A breeding pair could produce three litters of piglets a year , 36 or more in just 12 months ! You need to have a salutary idea ahead of fourth dimension how you ’re going to supervise and utilize that many small mini porc chop .
Whether you deal shote or harvest them for the mesa , you ’ll have to feed them in the interim . While they start out diminutive , they ’ll grow very tight , and their appetites get with them . Keeping them fed can be a real drain on the farm ’s resource , whether caloric or pecuniary .
register more : memorise what it means to range pigs and how you could get started .
The Off-Season
Then there ’s logistics , of class . Lots of folks like keep a pig or two over the produce season , fill out it out during the warm months and harvest home when the weather bring forth nerveless and the garden slows down for the winter .
farm animal is easy to keep while the weather is pleasant and piss lines feed . But spawn fund are on the farm twelvemonth - rotund , meaning year - troll chores . If your winters are on the stale side , it can be a real task make believe sure the animals have water in sub - freezing weather .
Do you get it on to take a break in wintertime and want to verify your task list is light at that time ? Remember that breed stock do n’t go to Florida when the blow fly .
So when is it a ripe idea to keep a farrowing sow and a Sus scrofa on the homestead ? Well , when a lot of spare calories are produced for all or at least a near part of the year , using breeding stock to convert that energy into pork work wonderfully .
hand truck gardeners and CSA owners are high on this list . The nature of their work produces so much extra food for so much of the year . If you provoke a wad of meat hiss for much of the yr , cooked offal is prime pig calories , exceedingly high in protein .
And a belittled cidery or brewery would provide alike surplus gram calorie on a regular basis .
So , the short answer : Before you tally breeding stock to the farm , do a small accounting first .
