pig manure nasties

I am researching pigs and considering getting two for my small 6 acre property. I've seen alot regarding pastured pork and wild feeding with acorns, chestnuts, blackberries, grubs etc but I would have to keep mine contained and hopefully use moveable pens to rotationally graze them somewhat. I have lots of black walnuts but not sure if they'll eat those due to the green/black husks and then the super hard shell. Anyone know about this?

More importantly, I was hoping to feed them kitchen scraps including meat leftovers. I read somewhere about folks who feed their pigs chicken offal from processing but won't that creat a biohazard with the pig manure? Any one know whether it would be dangerous to leave the pig poo on the ground and just move the pen?

Well we do give our pigs our kitchen scraps though there's not much meat in there. They do occasionally get chicken 'bits' but it's not from a commercial source, just our own so I don't know about the bio-hazard if one did it on a big scale. We do leave our pig poo on the ground but it doesn't stay there long as the wild birds come in and pick it over. Plus fly larvae then decompose it further, and the wild birds eat them too. Works a treat. Be careful though if you ever need to treat the pigs with medications as many of the meds come out in the poo and then kill the flies that lay their eggs in the poo, so the whole chain gets messed up. Our vet told us about this - she's mega-cool on environmental stuff, we like her

Of course you would have too cook the chicken guts or you would get intestinal parasites in your pigs. I was told that sheep worms take 18 days to hatch I dont know about pig worms but the idea is to keep the animal in one spot for a few days less than it takes for the worms to hatch out of the pig poo. So by the time the worm eggs in the poo hatch the pigs are gone and they don't get reinfected.

Are you sure? I thought you could just throw the guts in then pen. Pasture raised pigs are eating all sorts of wild varmints - guts and all.

I know pigs & chickens can be a vector for diseases like flu but if the chickens are healthy...

Jeffrey Hodgins wrote:Of course you would have too cook the chicken guts or you would get intestinal parasites in your pigs.

I guess by "biohazard" I am thinking of the same issues that arise from the use of humanure. All the sources I've read say it's best to compost humanure for at least 1 year before using on a garden. So I'm figuring that since pigs are omnivores like us that it would be a bad idea to just leave their manure on the ground. I would only have 2 pigs at the most and use them in a paddock shift system to plough an area that I want to convert into a garden. I just don't want to introduce e. coli or something like.

I don't think it's the same as humanure.

I mean we don't have to compost cow manure for a year and they have a certain amount of ecoli in there guts (as I assume most animals do). We don't wait a year for chickens, sheep, goats.

I was under the impression that you shouldn't use humanure in a garden at all.

Cj Verde wrote:I don't think it's the same as humanure.

I mean we don't have to compost cow manure for a year and they have a certain amount of ecoli in there guts (as I assume most animals do). We don't wait a year for chickens, sheep, goats.

Cows, sheep and goats are herbivores(i.e. no meat). Pigs and humans are omnivores (i.e. meat, grains, vegies and everything else) I began the thread with the point that I wanted to feed pigs kitchen scraps that include meat as well as cooked chicken offal from processing the occasional bird. Therefore I would like to know if this could cause a problem with the poop. I guess know one really knows?

You have a point with the chicken poop though. They do already eat meat leftovers and scraps from my table occasionally but I never worried about that poop. I don't know. I was hoping someone had a definite answer.

The only rule I'm aware of is "don't feed chickens to chicken or pigs to pigs."

Pigs are really quite clean animals given enough space. They will eat in one place, wallow in another,and will go to another area to poo. The problems come in when there area is too small or there numbers are too large. Given you have 6 acres and you only want 2 pigs give them quite a large space. They will be cleaner and heather. We always gave ours plenty of veggie waste from a local market, as well as grain. Went in with a relative only once who raised some in a small area it was disgusting never again.

Russ White wrote:Pigs are really quite clean animals given enough space. They will eat in one place, wallow in another,and will go to another area to poo. The problems come in when there area is too small or there numbers are too large. Given you have 6 acres and you only want 2 pigs give them quite a large space. They will be cleaner and heather. We always gave ours plenty of veggie waste from a local market, as well as grain. Went in with a relative only once who raised some in a small area it was disgusting never again.

There's a nice myth based on keeping them in a pen. Pigs out on pasture poop and pee all over the place. Pigs kept in a small pen will sometimes pick one area to be their toilet. Place lots of carbon on that area and keep adding it or muck it out. But why bother? Better to keep the pigs out on pasture and use managed rotational grazing. Let them poop and pee everywhere as nature intended. That is fertilizer and they're doing the work of spreading it. Saves labor.

Walter Jeffries wrote:Pigs out on pasture poop and pee all over the place.

That's interesting and, because pigs are your livelihood Walter, I believe you. Here, where we have currently 13 pigs (5 adults and 8 ten-week old piglets) cycled around 3 acres each divided into 4, they do definitely have a 'toilet area' in each paddock. And sometimes it annoys me intensely because they will NOT tractor that bit up, so yes it gets manured but not turned whereas other bits get turned but not manured. Guess that where the wisdom of running chickens across it afterwards comes in!

I'm quite glad you mentioned that, Walter.
About a month ago I moved my 3 pigs to a fairly large (1/3 acre) paddock and could not figure out why they were using the whole thing as their toilet! They are doing a fantastic job of tilling though.

Walter Jeffries wrote:
There's a nice myth based on keeping them in a pen. Pigs out on pasture poop and pee all over the place.