Why cooked food for pigs? Guessing reasons...

Hello,
I have my first pig... I am sure I will get informations from people still raising them traditionnally.
One point puzzles me though...
¿¿ why people usually COOK a soup for pigs?

I have tried to figure out possible reasons, if anybody can tell me which are true or not and any other reason for doing so, thanks!

- When you mix, you can get an untasty food eaten at the same time.
Or even slightly spoiled food?

- Cooked food is bland, thus a faster eating with less spoiling.
- A soup is liquid and they will drink without spoiling the water.
- some food can be more edible, like starch.
Can they eat raw potatoes?
- You can add meat with no risk of parasites.

So, would it be that cooking is useful when you raise pigs in a small area with dung on the floor? Is the main reason to avoid food contamination?
Are there some more edible food when cooked?
Is it for adding meat?

I have never heard of anyone "cooking " soup for piggys.  Soaking grains or fermenting them yes but cooking ? Not that I have heard of. (This certainly does not mean they do not)
Raw potatoes , yes they can eat them and no, mine do not like them... They will eat them later (like everything) but by choice they will pass them up.
Piggys will fowl everything.. they eat it anyways. a soup would soak away and be lost. They would eat the dirt to get the flavor.
Your piggys will poop in one spot if you have them in a confined area. keep that area raked up and move the poop to your compost area.
Meat)  Because we eat our piggys we do not allow them any processed meat at all. Nor do I give them wild game . Pigs are omnivores , they would gobble up meat but I prefer my pigs to be vegetarians.  

Here people cook a soup for pigs.... and I think they do so because they put there all the "bad" potatoes! If you say they do not really like them... maybe they do when they are cooked? lol I understand them!
So the traditional pig soup has potatos and cabagge...

I would not give any processed meat! I have read you prefer your pigs vegetarians, and I think that if they are omnivores, it means they need to have some meat. At least bugs in their fruits veggies.

That's what pigs are doing when rooting... besides looking for tasty young roots , they are eating every worm and bug that is unlucky enough to be in the way. That is enough meat in their diet for me.
Yes , my pigs do love cooked potato,  their favorite is when I have smoked baked potatoes for dinner and they get the skins .  Cabbage potato soup hmm , you could join your piggy for dinner.

We fed out pig food what is a grain type feed.  

I have heard of pig slop which is kitchen scraps, cooked and uncooked food scraps saved for the pigs.

Potatoes must be cooked for hogs to be able to eat them without gastrointestinal issues that can lead to death of the hog.
Making a potato soup is one way of doing this and it allows for other items to be included so it ends up more like what in the USA and Europe is called "Slop".
Cabbage and other gas inducing foods like broccoli and other cruciferous plants also would be better served to hogs cooked since that will reduce the amount of sulfur dioxide released and again prevent serious gastrointestinal issues from occurring.

Redhawk

Here, pig slop also included the first washing water of plates and dishes...

I don't know and will ask if they serve the soup cold or still warm!

Cooking pig food is something I do. But why, you ask? Why not just pour the pellets into the feed hopper as is? First of all, I don't use commercial pig pellets, nor much in the way of commercial feed. Thus I need to take a few steps in preparing the pig food.

Some foods I don't cook. Foods that the pigs like "as is" include many fresh fruits, old bread, milk that is beginning to turn bad, stale cereal, leftovers from my own kitchen, stale beer and other drinks. But other things I do indeed cook for a variety of reasons.

#1- cooked food is more digestible. It's a known fact in the hog industry that heat treated feed is slightly more digestible, resulting in faster and greater weight gain. Some cattle feedlots also steam treat their grains to improve and shorten finishing time for their cattle. Thus cooking pig feed = better weight gain.

#2- cooked food is often more palatable.  There are foods that my pigs turn down when raw, but readily eat when cooked. I find the exact same situation with myself. While I don't like raw onions, I adore cooked ones. So cooking means that the pigs waste less.

#3- cooking kills bacteria and fungi growing on the food. While food grown on my own farm appears to be "clean" from the various food poisoning forms of E. coli (etc), outside foods might be contaminated. Thus cooking off-farm food sources will help prevent introducing dangerous organisms into my own farm livestock. It's not a 100% guaranteed protection, but it helps (sort of like washing your hands to prevent bringing diseases and parasite eggs to your dinner plate).

#4- cooking prevents bringing in diseases and parasites that might be in off-farm waste foods. I often collect waste foods. It comes from local restaurants, stores, and friends. I don't know how that food was previously handled. Dropped on the floor? Contaminated by commercial meat liquids? Coughed or spit in? Food half eaten by unknown persons, that is, scrapings off restaurant plates? I can't naively assume that everyone is disease and parasite free, thus I cook slop to prevent passing these problems onto my pigs. So anything that has the potential to carry a problem gets cooked.

Do I feed my pigs soup? Well, sort of. The cooked foods end up like a thick stew, so I call it Mom's Famous Slop & Glop. They will drink up most of the liquid before eating the thicker stuff. And they will pick out any chunks of added fruit and meat first. Most of the slop & glop ingredients were processed through a grinder (old garbage disposal) prior to being cooked. So it really is sloppy glop. The pigs love it.

Most of the time Mom's Famous Slop & Glop is mixed with something prior to feeding. Sometimes it's several loaves of discarded bread from the grocery store, other times it's a big pot of cooked rice or cracked corn. Yet other times it's alfalfa haycubes that have been soaked in water and broken up. I prefer using the haycubes when I can get them cheap. I'll mix half a bucket of soaked, broken up alfalfa cubes with the cooked slop, then add any fresh fruit or cooked meat onto the top. I feed the pigs twice a day. They have run of a pasture the rest of the day.

Yes, I feed them meat. It is always cooked. They don't get a lot, but they do get some. Meat is too valuable an item to feed to the livestock, so they just get trimmings, slaughter waste, and leftovers....all cooked. That actually doesn't amount to much during the week.

I once spent some time at a raw food community, one of the guys, a german, had a pig that he of course was giving only raw food.
But it never gained any weight! SO... the whole point with giving it cooked food, is more meat and fat... unless you specifically want a light weight one, but the point somehow with a pig is to have a fat/bulky one.

Thanks all! I think we have a thorough answer, and I cannot think of anything more to add! ....though welcome if anybody has another good reason to add!

Especially, I think that all that pigs get from turning around a spot of forest is for sure much cleaner than most of what we can give... i take the same sort of precaution for myself. All the argumants are in the end exactly the same as for us! I am also as much a raw foodist as I can, but 100% is rarely the good choice, either for cooked or raw.

->  I especially appreciate to know which are the food that have to be cooked.

- potatoes
-> Is it the same for all starches, as for us? (apart from the aspect of getting them fat quicker, good point Lana!)

- cruciferous
(even guinea pigs avoid them)

- Spoiled or old food to a certain point.

Any other?

This has already been said, but I wanted to reiterate the main reason why by law kitchen waste must be cooked before feeding to pigs, which is to prevent the passing on of pathogens from them eating other farmed animals.  This was the official cause of the 2001 foot and mouth crisis in the UK - spread to over 2000 cases and 6 million animals were killed as a control measure.

So, we concluded with the interest of permaculture: produce, eat and live locally!  There is some potential danger when transporting food, especially when already cooked.
All those spreading diseases also show the difference between small size farms Vs big concentrations of animals.

Maybe people do not see where the problem is for animals because we suffer from the same problem quite often? Many people are used to live in not ideal conditions, packed in buildings with noise and contamination around. How can people want to fight for animals right, when themselves do not even beneficiate from these same rights?

Yes, this topic shows a big parallel between what our species share with others!

(Edited 1st for a typo, then reorganisation of the ideas)