Jon Hamilton

Sounds like pasture is the way to go then. I'm picturing a circle of life type arrangement- chickens to keep the flies down and give egg protein to the hogs. Hogs to attract flies for the chickens. Free range eggs and pastured pork for me.

I'm putting up electric wire for hogs on an existing 3-strand barbed wire fence- one hot wire 12" from the ground and another 24". It encloses about 2 acres. Will that keep chickens in and predators out reasonably well? I don't want their free range to include my yard and the road.

I have an open hillside of about 1/2 acre I want to use to feed hogs. Not a herd (yet... tenting my fingers), just a few for my family consumption. The options I'm kicking around are:
1. Plant corn, cut it and feed it.
2. Co-plant corn and something high protein like alfalfa, paddock them in the field and let them harvest it themselves.
3.Plant pasture and rotate paddocks.

I have 5 acres total, most of it woods. The idea is to be as self-sufficient and buy as little commercial feed as possible. They'll also get all the apples they can eat from the old trees I have and eggs from the laying hens I also plan to raise. I have a small tractor, a plow and a bush hog but no harvesting equipment. Any input?