Sooner or later, almost every homesteader and many market farmers considers keeping or breeding hogs. They are excellent meat producers, great garden tillers and they make superb garbage disposals. They are also friendly, smart, unbelievably strong and subsequently tough to contain!
The most common route for small farmers is to buy one or two “feeder” pigs. These are pigs that are recently weaned and weigh 40-60 pounds. The pigs are kept until they reach butcher weight of 250 pounds (or more). This generally takes about eight months, depending on feeding practices. Free-range, mostly grass-fed hogs take longer to reach butcher weight, but the meat is much leaner. Corn fed hogs gain very quickly, but much of it is fat.
Often, after buying a few feeder pigs, market farmers start thinking about raising their own. And this is where the fun begins.
Gilts (female pigs that have not yet been bred) are commonly bred at about 160 pounds. Once they have farrowed the first time, they are referred to as sows.
There are many different “systems” for raising hogs and each one has its own merits. Swine Production [1], from a SARE newsletter, does a fantastic job of detailing the systems that are most attractive to farmers or smaller breeders.
Initially, we built large farrowing pens in our main barn. The pens are about 6' x 8' with a small area inside for the baby pigs to move away from the sow as needed. This was our approach to “conventional” hog-raising.
The pigs taught us that they are happiest when they can be in groups. The baby pigs scoot out of the pens and are running together in the main aisle of the barn by the time they are a week old. Sows share the responsibility of nursing the pigs, so it’s important to have your group of sows farrow fairly close together. We have also farrowed outside as late as the end of September and as early as mid-April here in South Dakata with no loss of baby pigs due to cold. We give the sows two full bales of straw to build their nests. Hogs seem to take a community approach to raising piglets, and this is a great benefit to the babies and the sows. No single sow becomes overly stressed by a large litter and even the smallest piglets can find a spot where there is less competition for nursing.
One major factor to consider with hogs is that they are very intelligent. They like to play. “Toys” can be anything from paper feed sacks to hanging rubber tires (no steel belts). Bowling balls, short pieces of old garden hose and rocks make great toys too. Given room, they make up games of chase, tag and “king of the hill.”
Since pigs will play with anything (and are amazingly powerful), their feed and water containers must be very sturdy. Our best (and least expensive) success has been heavy-duty rubber pans. The hogs also have access to the automatic Ritchie waterer, but they have learned how to remove the plugs from the bowls and flood water all over the place (for fun, of course). We had to reverse the plugs.
Hogs can be on pasture for much (or all) of the year. Where there is ample grass, there is little problem with them rooting or challenging fences. They will root if they are hot. Our solution (lacking a natural pond) was to create a huge, shallow concrete “bowl” in the ground as a clean wallow. We fill it daily (sometimes twice a day) in the warm months. Pigs cannot “sweat” and require cool places to regulate their body temperature.
Electric fencing works very well for hogs. It is inexpensive to run and once the hogs are trained, they do not challenge it. A hot wire at nose height (24”) and another one 6” or so off the ground will keep them away from “regular fences". We’ve found it takes three wires as the sole fence to contain ours. Some folks have great success with just one wire.
There are many approaches to traditional and alternative feeds for hogs. To completely avoid medicated feeds, prepackaged commercial pellets are not an option. Our basic winter ration for the hogs is alfalfa hay and corn … just exactly what all of the other livestock get. Hogs will gladly consume just about anything: pumpkins, squash, turnips, silage. They seem to enjoy dried corn left on the cobs. They will root, even in the winter, and will self harvest almost any root crop. Mangels are also a good choice. You can plant fields with the hogs in mind and allow them to harvest all of their own feed during the winter: corn, millet, milo, pumpkins, etc. On a smaller scale, they can be turned into your garden at the end of the season. We allow our piglets to roam at will (within reason) and they happily clean up after cattle, sheep and poultry. Nothing is wasted when you have hogs.
If you are just looking to raise your own pork and have enough piglets to pay for the operation, two or three sows is plenty. Our “profit line” (where we actually had money left over after deducting expenses, eating pigs, etc) is four sows. This is generally calculated on each sow raising eight pigs and farrowing twice a year. Most of our sows usually raise 10-12 pigs.
The laws vary so widely in regards to selling meat from the farm that it is difficult to address. In our case, we sometimes sell the hog on the hoof. We haul it to the butcher (for a fee) and the buyer pays the butcher for processing when he gets his hog. Generally, we will advertise feeders available about a week before we plan to take them to market. Buyers contract with us to raise their butcher pig to a specific weight and get it to the butcher. They pay a deposit and then the balance is due when we take the hog in based on current market value (of organic, pasture raised pork). There is a rising demand for healthier meat products and growing hogs to butcher weight may be a good way to meet that demand if you are close to reasonable population centers.
Overall, hogs are a fantastic homestead animal and a dependable producer. They are cost efficient to keep, require very little special equipment and, best of all, are fun.