Pigs, Hogs, Swine - General

[templeton]

Mar 31, 2013 1:03:28 GMT -5 steev said:

Given the need to feed humans before pigs, while pigs are food for humans, I think we must look to the means of feeding pigs used occasionally by Woo in "Deadwood".

While Woo had a line in undertaking, I recall the specially adapted outhouses in Goa in India back in the 70's. Put a man off his business to look down and see a snuffling snout!
I declined the local delicacy, Goan pork curry.
T

[steev]

Kind of the precursor to not wanting to see sausage being made.

[mnjrutherford]

Our piggy was a Yorkshire and we estimate that we purchased 8 #50 bags of pig mash (first months) and pellets. The cost was under $20 per bag. The piglet itself cost $25. The slaughter and butchering cost $145 and they made special sausage and stuffed it for that price. We took home 209 lbs of meat. Talk about your bulging freezers! So far, I like the Canadian bacon the best.

[Deleted]

Could pigs be happy on a diet of lots of grass or soft plant matter? I understand that some animals may digest plant proteins more readily than people do.

[Deleted]

They are obviously more flexible in their needs if they can go feral and still grow to several hundred pounds in the badlands.

One local said that 100-350 lbs was more typical, but photographed a 700+ animal.

This tells me that they're finding something common and plentiful to eat, which is not sold at the feed store.

[circumspice]

Swine are omnivorous. I have seen a feral hog trotting down a county road with a road-killed raccoon in its mouth. Honestly, they will eat anything. In drought years, they devastate the local home gardens, they eat pet food that is left outside, they eat ornamental plants. They are a nasty tempered, dangerous plague at times. But in good years, you rarely see any.

[steev]

Around the farm, they "rototill" under the oaks for acorns and do the same to rodent burrows; general rule of thumb is "Shoot 'em when you can".

[circumspice]

Here's a really cool concept in hog trapping... You build a corral type pen & add this saloon style trap door... Place your bait & wait. Supposedly the first hog trapped lures in other hogs. Wow, who'da thunk it?! :-P

m.sportsmansguide.com/Product.aspx?a=478719

[steev]

Saloon-keepers figured it out for humans; seems reasonable that what works for long pigs would work for short ones, feeding and social behavior being so similar.

[12540dumont]

My pig story #1.

None of the following is politically correct. I do not mean to offend anyone.

My father told me this:

During the depression there were folks passing through everyday. They'd stop at the farm and ask to sweep or do some work for something to eat. My father would give them a day's work and my mother would give them a meal.

(This farm is now the intersection of Highway 101 and 280 in San Jose).

One day this black man comes to the farm and says he hasn't eaten in several days. So my father says he'll feed him if he slops the pigs. (Pig slop then was sour milk, potato skins and leavings from the Del Monte Cannery. Nasty smelling foul things.)

The pig troughs were cannery drums cut in half and welded to a couple of fence post, so the pigs couldn't tip them over. You were supposed to stand on the fence and pour the buckets, dipped from the barrels into the troughs.

"Well this fella had no sense, he got right in there with the pigs. The pigs got so excited they pushed him up against the barrel, and he cut his leg. The pigs tore his leg off. It was all we could do to get him out of there. My father felt pretty bad. We put him in the back of the truck and drove him to the hospital (O'Connor). He worked at the farm for the rest of his life. But he would make a wide path around those pigs.

He could not have been more than 35 when he died, still a young man." (There were about 100 hogs on the farm in those days, about 20 to a pen).

My father told me this story the day I almost decapitated myself on the same farm.....

[steev]

My housemate eats pork a tad reluctantly. He had an uncle who was a pig farmer, who may have suffered a heart attack while in with the hogs; whatever the situation, when discovered, he was dead and not all still there.

[olddog]

What stories! I believe them.

[mnjrutherford]

Our piggy danced. I think these stories and our experience point to "moderation" in raising pigs. We are looking for 3 new piglets at the moment. One for us and 2 that we will raise for friends.

In the days since we passed our piggy I have come to really understand how important the cycle of life is. We have a rather surprising amount of food waste. Chickens don't take as much as piggy did. We miss piggy not only for taking care of our waste but for rototilling, weeding at the root level, and fertilizing. In creating a permaculture, animals moving in and out are a necessity.

[steev]

Exactly so. While I realize that there are those who avoid this-or-that animal, I think they are only able to do that in an ecosystem of sufficient alternatives. I wonder whether there will be many whose diets are restrictive (as opposed to restricted), when humans venture into Space.

[steev]

Speaking of which: Joseph, how's that lichen landrace coming along? They're talking about recruiting for a Mars expedition. Surely they'll need some good material for seed first go, so there will something thriving when we get back; wouldn't want the reindeer to starve.