need boar advice

is it a bad idea to use a boar from a warm weather farm? i can not locate one in my climate. pigs seem pretty adaptable, so i dont know if it will be an issue. the batch i have now came from a confinement operation, and they adjusted to pasture (and a grain free diet) really well. but i dont know if the ability to handle temperature differnce are more ingrained in the the genetics.

our average daytime temperature is 20 c, the farm in question is more like 35 c. we get night time frost from time to time. if i decide to use this farm, would i be better off using AI, or buying a young intact male.

on a side note, on my search for loacal pig operattions, i heard of a farm that finishes all their pork with avocado.

Certainly getting pigs that are from a management system and climate similar to yours is a point in their favor but there are many other factors too. Of course, if you can't find a better boar then the lesser boar is the best boar.

@neil mock: "....we get night time frost from time to time."

No expert here, but we have had pet pigs, both pot-bellied and large farm breeds, for a few decades. We are in northern Minnesota with the temps that go with the region. All the pigs here are free-ranging and have appropriate shelter and supplemental food when needed. Pigs that we've had have come from all over the US and have had no problem adapting, boars, sows, what have you. We even had a couple Ossabaw Island pigs that came from a breeding herd near Lake Superior after their ancestry had adapted them from Europe to that island in the south Atlantic off of Georgia. And of course the pot-bellies are originally from SE Asia and the Yucatans, a villiage pig from southern Mexico. Pigs are noted for being one of the domesticated animals that can go feral in a hurry......hence the wild pig populations increasingly moving north in the US that are derived from original escapes from domesticated situations.

advice on AI? i have read that it can be tricky with pigs.

thanks

I researched AI extensively, reading about it and talking with several people who do it including one for a living. Everything I heard said it was pretty easy with pigs.

I ended up borrowing boars and then getting our own as we have enough sows to justify the boars. I figure that to justify the cost of a boar takes three sows if by land (pasture) and six if by seed (grain fed). Run the numbers for yourself. We started with four gilts so AI never made sense financially even if it is easy.

the only farm that i found that would allow use of a boar, wants me to bring the ladies to him. it is not a place that i would like to leave the ladies (combine confinement operation with the third world). so yeah, looks like i will be giving AI a shot.

thanks walter