Permies Poll: Do you raise your own hogs?

None yet, but its on my todo list. American Guinea Hogs probably.

My Thoughts on Piggies;
I only buy wieners and raise them to butcher.
Breeding and birthing are much more involved and not worth my time or money.
The smell can be mitigated with Diatomaceous earth sprinkled on their poop piles each day.

Raising your own hogs allows you to control what they eat.
We started raising them as Liz could not digest the hormone-riddled pork from the supermarket.
There is nothing as tasty and good for you as healthy, home-raised farm animals.

It is well worth the time and effort involved!

No. Too much work on this place already, and putting in sturdy enough fencing is just not in the budget, financially, time-wise, or energy-wise. So, we buy from a local farmer, instead.

I raise Kunekunes for my own use.  On occasion I sell them. They are much easier to handle than regular pigs.  They root less and break out less than regular pigs.  I did had some baby pigs break out while I was away at the Big City.  Even given that I have a great herd dog,  they did a remarkable amount of damage to the yard before the dog could get them back to their pen and stand guard.  I have been rolling the yard with every rain  for a couple of months now. And no, I am not fussy on lawn care.

I have found that used metal roofing, laid horizontally, and partially buried will keep even wieners in a pen.

Hi Thomas,

Two of my pens use roofing panels.  Unfortunately, they were in a different pen.

Hi We have 5 sows and a bore, and really appreciate having our own pork to eat as well as an ample supply of pig waste for fertilizer.
They are a fare bit of work, so in the US maybe not a good (financial)return for your time. We have a concrete floor and walls set up as we are in a tropical area and they like lying on the cool floor during the heat of the day. The floor wash is run into a pit which allows all the liquids to soak into the ground to become very productive soil for anything you want to grow.
Bottom line is, if you take all the output from the meat to the waste, I think it is very useful part of  looking after your land which is to me the most important part of what many of us trying to achieve with our acreage big or small.
Cheers
Chris (in Laos)

We have a few...... They're American Guinea Hog, Mangalitsa, and Kune Kune mixes. Knowing what they eat & how they're raised is our biggest reason for raising our own.

I had pigs as 4H projects as a child.  Bought the feeder pig, sold the finished pig.

Pigs are wonderful intelligent and affectionate creatures.  Sometimes it appears that they have a sense of humor.

They will poop in the same spot in their pen, and don’t lie in it if they have other options…

They are happiest in a pasture, of course.  If they can have forest floor, they like that too, they eat wild foods.  They are hard on gardens, but the rooting action is great for the soil if it is spread over a large area.  They like a patch of moist soil to lie in.  Most problems with raising pigs come from confining too many pigs in too small an area, in my opinion.

A woman I worked with had a pig as a house pet.  She had him for years and years.  The pig slept in her bed, they are that clean if allowed to be.

I have never intentionally raised hogs but have "raised" many wild hogs. Far too many. Thousands of them. Which reminds me, I was asked to make a thread about trapping them. Guess I should get that done soon because this is prime hog trapping season.

We’ve been raising wieners for meat for 5 years. 1st year used an old shed as we weren’t sure what we were getting into. Found it to be easy. Built a shed for them on a concrete slab (maritime zone 5b). Have a 800 gallon IBC water tote which runs into an old horse on demand waterer. We have about 1.5 acres for them. Split in half to allow the land to rest. Each 3/4 section is partly wooded, they love the shade and make themselves hollows to lie in. Run a single line of white electric tape fence about a foot off the ground. Never had an issue with them breaking out. Train them on the electric fence when they first arrive by running the electric tape inside a paddock with 8 foot rough 2x4s on three side and they shed on 4th. They’ll bump into the tape once or twice. After about 10 days in the paddock, the 2x4 opposite the shed is removed and they have the run of the field for next 4.5 months. As noted intelligent creatures. Ours have always been friendly. All have loved a scratch on the back of the neck. Hard to see them go, there are tears shed and the homestead seems less once they are gone. I say give a try.

Jim Warburton wrote:We’ve been raising wieners for meat for 5 years. 1st year used an old shed as we weren’t sure what we were getting into. Found it to be easy. Built a shed for them on a concrete slab (maritime zone 5b). Have a 800 gallon IBC water tote which runs into an old horse on demand waterer. We have about 1.5 acres for them. Split in half to allow the land to rest. Each 3/4 section is partly wooded, they love the shade and make themselves hollows to lie in. Run a single line of white electric tape fence about a foot off the ground. Never had an issue with them breaking out. Train them on the electric fence when they first arrive by running the electric tape inside a paddock with 8 foot rough 2x4s on three side and they shed on 4th. They’ll bump into the tape once or twice. After about 10 days in the paddock, the 2x4 opposite the shed is removed and they have the run of the field for next 4.5 months. As noted intelligent creatures. Ours have always been friendly. All have loved a scratch on the back of the neck. Hard to see them go, there are tears shed and the homestead seems less once they are gone. I say give a try.

Sounds like “hog heaven”.  Slaughter is always a sad day hopefully a “one bad day” life.

I remember lying with a pig in the shade and the cool earth.  The pig talking to me.

Thanks for the description of easy fence and size description of your rotation system.  I have 6 acres, and obviously love pigs.

This is our first year doing it. We got 2 Idaho Pasture pigs.

I am raising Idaho pastured pigs this year for the first time.  My experience has been great so far.  

We got two weaners in June and will have them butchered in January.  We trained them on electric net fence surrounded by hog panels during the first couple of weeks and they have not gotten out at all.  

I move them around every couple of weeks.  First they were on pasture, now at the edge of our forest.  They have benefitted from a lot of windfall apples and are getting quite fat.  

I built a small triangular hut for them, on skids, and drag it from one paddock to the next.  At first I was nervous about keeping them contained but now let them wander free for a while on moving day while getting the new paddock all set up and have no trouble getting them into the new fenced area by shaking a bucket of feed.  

I added a nipple waterer to a food grade 55 gallon plastic drum, held in place with fence posts and haven't had any trouble with this setup.  

Farm raised pork is the best! We raise crossbred hogs with good genetics, Yorkshire/Hampshire sows and a Duroc cross boar. They have produced well, with low maintenance, run on pasture, supplemented with 3-4lbs of feed in the afternoon. I bought a Gloucestershire boar pig this August. We plan to breed him to our younger gilts this spring to add on more belly for bacon. We have woven wire fence stretched 6 inches above the ground with one strand of barbed wire on the bottom. This has worked well to keep them from pulling up on the fence. We have other livestock and rotate pastures, this works as a "all in one fence" for us. All of ours are friendly and easy to handle, but we have spent time working with them.

For our pens around the barn we have wire hog panels framed with 1in-1.5 steel tubing. This works well for hogs. We bought ours at a farm auction 10 -12 years ago. There are lots of fencing options out there, the challenge is finding the one that will work best for you and your land.
We use these round top sheds for our hog houses, they are durable and last a long time. It's in our garden at the moment, I penned a couple of pigs in there this summer to get rid of the Johnson grass.
An A-frame on 4x4 skids made out 2x4's and tin works well too.

Your state Extension office or other state Extension websites will have helpful Fact Sheets on raising swine. The Missouri Extension office has these if you want to keep track of your budget costs.

https://extension.missouri.edu/publications?title=&combine=Swine&sort_by=field_revised_date_value&sort_order=DESC

If you want to build your own shed, waters, etc. this site has some good plans.

https://smallfarmersjournal.com/plans-for-hog-houses/

Always had hogs growing up, fed them the waste grain settling out of the waterers, and also had them in my 30's, never slaughtered in either instance they went to the auction 2 towns over. Pretty ambivalent about getting in deep as a income and home food source, but hardened into a no when I read of a pig valve into a human heart and the guy lived. Too close to cannibalism for me.  Maybe Circe was right

I just got piglets this autumn!  They are so cute and fun!

I waited a long time to do it.  I did not feel like I was ready to take on more work but my kid keeps wanting to eat ham and bacon, so it seemed like the next logical step with trying to fill in as many of our food needs as possible.  

I went to visit the local hog farmer and got to know his operation.  That helped a lot.  It is not much different than keeping the other animals we have but it will fill in a huge gap in our food self sufficiency.

We just started last month. There was a farm down the road downsizing their operation so I came home with 4 grower gilts/barrows, a 4 year old boar, and a pregnant gilt. The gilt was young and only had 2 in her litter, but now we're up to 8 pigs total. We keept one piglet intact and cut the other little guy, so we'll have two boars total. These are all mixed breeds of full sized pigs.

I plan on keeping the gilts for breeding and raising their litters on pasture. Short term we'll have corn/alfalfa fed meat around January. We're feeding them alfalfa twice a day and a little corn for dinner, mostly because that's what they were eating at the farm we got them from. I'm not stuck on feeding them corn, that's just where we're at until the pasture starts looking healthier.

There's enough room on our property to keep pens for breeding stock. I'll probably try selling some of the litter to people who don't have as much space, but we do have about 35 acres to rotational graze them.

This is all new to us so we're moving slow but so far the pigs aren't skittish and we haven't lost any, like we did when we got goats.

Yes. I raise 13 sows 2 boars and 20+ feeders. I farrow out over 200 piglets and primary sell feeder pigs in the spring and fall here in North Central WI. I raise Gloucestershire Old Spots & Red Wattles.
Its my goal to be WI go to for the best Heritage pasture/woodland feeder pigs.

Stella Stacy wrote:Yes. I raise 13 sows 2 boars and 20+ feeders. I farrow out over 200 piglets and primary sell feeder pigs in the spring and fall here in North Central WI. I raise Gloucestershire Old Spots & Red Wattles.
Its my goal to be WI go to for the best Heritage pasture/woodland feeder pigs.

Hello Stella!

Welcome to permies!  

What are you feeding your hogs in winter?

Hello, I get a free supply of Spent Brewers grains from a local brewery. Counter to what many pig producers will tell you, pigs can be raised on spent grains alone with added minerals. I give them about 3 lbs of hog mineral just twice a week in the grains.
If the brewery is running low I supplement with GMO free rolled corn, just 3lb per pig.
In all my adult breeders on a yearly basic only cost me about 100$ to feed plus my gas to pick up the grains. Many people are amazed how little they eat. I have specifically chosen the best pigs from my litters and breeds making a pig that can thrive of little feed intake. My feeders in the summer months forage on pasture and get only 5lb of 16% grower and I have a finish rate of a 300lb live weight pig at 8 months.
They also get pumpkins and squash from Oct through Dec.

The photo below is my Hay bale farrow huts. 8×9 space with large FREE Round bales. Thick layer of woodchips, sawdust and dry straw. Free plywood for roof and free billboard tarp to cover. The who system creates a compost effect. At -10° F outside its 50 to 55 inside. I build a 14× 20 hay hut for all the breeders and then as they come to their farrow date each momma get theit own birth hay hut.
No neee for heat lamps
With that said its important to have a good heritage breed that is winter hardy and the Gloucestershire Old Spot and red wattle are. I choice pick winter hardy pigs.
Its as regenerative as it get. The hay will be spread out and used for hay milk cover for gardens and my compost system. I sell hay/manure compost to my community as well.