Raising hogs

awwwwww how can you eat such a cute thing?








lol (just kidding)


personally, though, i'd rather have some kinda poultry or bunnies. cheaper, smaller, can eat the whole thing in 1 sitting- less to worry about preserving!

Hogs are the probably the fastest growing meat. I don't have the numbers in front of me now, but I don't push any of my animals.

The biggest cost is the butcher. It isn't that hard just make sure you have a helper. I have done it alone and it isn't that hard, they are just big.

A good source of feed is a breadstuffs distributer. I used to get a truck load every week or every other week. Less in hot weather, store in the shade and it keeps much better. Keep the sweets to a minimum, like donuts, bread and the like are better for them. This can be had free. They just throw the extra in a dumpster and that costs them money. Check your yellow pages. In a post SHTF this or store bought feed will not be a choice, but this is good practice. I'm going to try a suggestion I heard a while back; that is make a three sisters garden for my pigs. I try to give mine as natural a diet as possible. This will solve the age old question of what to do with all the zuchinni.

The younger a pig is the more thrifty it uses feed. You can use them at any size, from suckling to 500#.

Give them enough space and they will keep themselves pretty clean and not so stinky.

fj60 said:

Also, what's your favorite easy keeping homestead hog?

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If you are going to keep the "mama" hogs, then some kind of Yorkshire cross sow is what you want. They are called the "Mother Breed" because they do such a good job of raising their pigs. If you provide a good warm dry spot and an ample supply of bedding material, sticks, hay, etc, they will raise a litter of pigs. Probably a York/Landrace cross, or even a York/Spot cross. A Hampshire or Duroc boar is good.

Raising hogs is a good practice for subsistence type farming, because you can make good use of most crop byproducts, such as corn cobs, pea hulls, etc. After you are through harvesting a crop, such as peas, corn, etc, you can turn the hogs in on the residue. You must have some grain or purchased feed, though, because they just are not going to produce the pork without it. Feeding a couple of sows and their pigs, and a boar is an expensive proposition if you are buying the feed. For most people, it is a whole lot cheaper to buy their pork at the grocery, or even to go to a farm and buy a ready-to-slaughter hog. In a survival type situation, it would probably be a good practice for one farm in an area to produce pork for sale on the hoof to neighbors. Otherwise, as someone already said, other types of meat production might be more viable. Hogs have to have some good fences, too.