talk about pigs

[Norman Bernstein]

I once had a one day consulting gig at a hog processing factory in Iowa. Yes, I could smell it a mile away, and when I got there, it seemed that every surface, both outside as well as inside, was covered with a fine layer of pig fat. Thankfully, the equipment that was failing (stuff that I designed) was mounted inside a large NEMA cabinet, which was clean. The problem was found within 15 minutes, and I was out of there in an hour, on my way back to the airport, $1000 richer as well as compensated for the travel expense.

I like bacon and pork… but I would prefer not to ever return to a hog processing factory. I still remember the smell.

[Paul Pless]

[TomF]

I'm sure there were many ordinary folks who attended the parties, and that the great majority of them had no idea at all of the sinister stuff. What I was saying was that in the news reporting I remember from the time, there was a lot of emphasis on how the slaughtered women tended to be from demographics where there'd not be as much attention paid were they to go missing.

Sorry Lee, helluva thing I put into your nice thread.

[L.W. Baxter]

it's ok tom. important to get a well rounded perspective on things. apparently, most of the hogs that make it to market have eaten multiple murder victims.

[Bobcat]

Two pig stories: my brother in the mid 70's raised a couple of pigs on his acreage on Bainbridgesw Island: Porkchop and J Edgar. I helped slaughter and butcher one of them. Dad showed us how. It's a big job and moving around a deceased hog shows you why the term is "dead weight." Ran into my HS girlfriend's father on the ferry home. I was not pleased to meet him when Dad and I were in clothes that looked and smelled like a barnyard.

Grampa always raised a pig on the farm. One year the hog got too big. At slaughter time, Grampa was sticking the pig in the neck while a neighbor held its legs. The pig got loose with the old man on his back and broke through the wall of the barn, dumping Grampa in the barnyard

[TomF]

In some cookbook or other I once read that the French used to call the farmyard pig "the gentleman who pays the rent."

[Garret]

Funny clip Paul, but I gotta say that, given enough space (enough to treat them humanely) pigs are probably the cleanest barnyard animal. Cows, sheep, etc. will drop a load wherever they are - even if standing in the hay tray (that's a sheep thing I guess) - but pigs will go as far as possible from their food to make a deposit. With every one of the pigs I raised, they'd go to the diagonally opposite corner from their food to do their business.

[L.W. Baxter]

yes, pigs get a bad rap because they are generally over-confined or crowded.

if i do a pig yard, the area i am thinking of is 16'x100'.

there is a new breed of medium sized hog here in the northwest that was bred to graze rather than root, the "idaho pasture pig". they can eat grass and hay as a substantial part of their diet. an idea.

[Garret]

yes, pigs get a bad rap because they are generally over-confined or crowded.

if i do a pig yard, the area i am thinking of is 16'x100'.

there is a new breed of medium sized hog here in the northwest that was bred to graze rather than root, the "idaho pasture pig". they can eat grass and hay as a substantial part of their diet. an idea.

Nice - that should make 'em happy. I raised all mine with a friend & we had a pen that covered 2 counties. Well, it was roughly 25x50 or so, but the county/town line went through the middle of it.

The grazing pigs sound interesting.

[Decourcy]

yes, pigs get a bad rap because they are generally over-confined or crowded.

if i do a pig yard, the area i am thinking of is 16'x100'.

there is a new breed of medium sized hog here in the northwest that was bred to graze rather than root, the "idaho pasture pig". they can eat grass and hay as a substantial part of their diet. an idea.

My next pigs will be kunekune

[John of Phoenix]

Speaking of pig stories…my dear departed mother-in-law's Pig Joke -


Two guys are going into town driving down a Farm to Market Road and they get stuck behind a pickup truck. In the back of the truck is some produce, some chickens, some ducks and a couple of pigs. The truck goes around a sharp curve and one of the pigs comes flying out of the back of the truck, rolls across the road and winds up in the ditch. The guys come to a screeching halt, jump out of the car and run over to the pig who was rather dazed but otherwise unhurt. They manage to load the pig into the back seat of their car and go tearing after the pickup truck. Of course further down the road a cop has a speed trap set up and pulls them over. They explain to the cop what they were trying to do and the cop says, “That's very thoughtful but you'll never catch that pickup. I'm impressed and I tell you what… I'll forget about the speeding ticket if you guys just take this pig to a petting zoo a couple of miles down the road.

“Ok, right, will do” and off they go.


A couple of days later the cop sees the two guys drive past with the pig sitting in the backseat, wearing a baseball cap. He tears out after them, pulls them over, walks up and sternly says, “I thought I told you guys to take this pig to the ZOO.”


“We did, we did and he had such a good time that today… we're taking him to a ball game.

[switters]

Pet potbelly for several years, lived in the back yard, very sweet unless beer was around. If you set a can of beer down on a fence post or table she would ram it until the beer spilled. Holding your beer could result in her raming you in the back of the knee. Had to keep her in her pen during parties in the back yard. But she also liked attention would nuzzle up and then roll over for belly rubs. Liked head scratches and cleaner than the dog, much quieter also. Getting someone to trim the nails was a problem as she got older.

Have also dealt with raising pigs as a shared investment on a farm, usually about 5-8 pigs so not an epic undertaking, and we let them have plenty of space When it was hot filling the mud hole was usually entertaining. In every group of pigs there would always be "the one". The one pig that would have to be right where the hose was aimed and would just frolic and jump up to get his face in the water stream.

[woodpile]

I feed my pig fresh vegetables every day and he convert's them into bacon.

[Garret]

A friend fed his pig with day-old (more like week-old) bread he got for free. He called him "WonderPig".

I wonder if that's why the Green Acres pig was named "Arnold"?

[LeeG]

Texas Tom and LeeG both have given you good points.
A porker given the chance will eat you or your kin given a chance.
LeeG has done what I never thought of. Training hogs to respect a hot wire-wires.
Way cheaper than hog fencing and the flexibility to change pastures quickly and easily.
The last thirty years the advances in electric fencing would have my Dad and Grandfathers amazed. Takes a stone or steel shed to confine hogs. My buddy Gene Peterson found out a wooden tobacco shed couldn't hold a pig.

My daughter and husband are learning all the time. I’m a lost cause. We get pallets of 50 lb bags of swine feed from a local supplier. The feed gets mixed w water and has a day to hydrate or ferment in 5gal buckets before they get fed. Amount depending on size of pigs. It just gets dumped on the ground in their paddock in different places. The paddocks are big enough that they’re not eating on their poop. Water is a 50gal blue barrel w one or two nipples. The barrels have to be kept near full as they can easily knock over a half barrel when they get bigger. If it was just me I wouldn’t have them but if you want to have a bunch of holes in the ground, move what topsoil you have downhill, get a whole other operation going for some pork they do that pig thing well. Maybe I can grow ginseng in the gullies where the topsoil went. Definitely a human bred beast for how fast they grow. They’re rototillers all right but tank like and thoroughly destructive. I started to get attached to the last two crops but glad to see them go.

First few years tried 12v and solar powered fence energizers then finally realized a few hundred feet of insulated wire from an energizer plugged into 120v was a lot cheaper and more reliable.

I never really enjoyed pork fat in the past but this stuff really is good. The chops have a 3/4” strip of fat that I’ll have a few bites if like desert. I was holding one of the twins in my lap at the table and he grabbed a 2” chunk and ate it up. It has a soft watery mouth feel although the 14 mo old was one grease baby hands and face.

[Bobby of Tulsa]

[LeeG]

When my father was young a feller murdered his wife and threw her naked body into the pen with the pigs and cleared out, assuming that they would take care of the evidence. A neighbour found her body a couple of days later. The pigs were very hungry but hadn't touched her, so her wounds were clearly visible and the husband was convicted.
I have a five year old black sow- her parents were wild. She is bad tempered and unpredictable, despite having been well treated since I got her at six weeks old. She is a digger, so her pen has to be really secure. An electric fence won't stop them if they really want out. I've seen footage of wild pigs squealing before they get to the fence, but still going through. The Saddlebacks usually just couldn't be bothered trying to escape JayInOz

You’re right about the fence. For the piglets in a small pen it’s three wires about 4” apart then two about 7” apart when they’re bigger. Rarely there’s been a breakout but we get them back. Mostly it’s a branch that knocked a wire down or someone wasn’t diligent on wire placement. I got spooked last summer when I fed them a little late and was moving too slow to where I had 8 salivating screaming, I mean screaming pigs on one side of the wire and as I dumped a bucket over the wire one of the big ones just shot right over a low spot in the wire and was enthusiastically following me. 280 lbs of foaming pig. I dumped another bucket quickly in their paddock and he went right back without a squeal.

[Hugh MacD]

no pigs=no people eaten by pigs. do the math!

No pigs=no people eating bacon !

[Canoeyawl]

No pigs=no people eating bacon !

Does anyone recall Jamies tag line, "I like Bacon"?

[Paul Pless]

lee, which breed of pig would you choose for your farm?

[L.W. Baxter]

lee, which breed of pig would you choose for your farm?

likely whatever weaners i can find for cheap.

we are not in hog heaven around here, not many breeders, so prices are uneconomically high for piglets. like, $5 to $10/lb...while finished hogs sell for a couple bucks.

[LeeG]

We had some Berkshire Mangalistas, hairy pigs.

[Paul Pless]

likely whatever weaners i can find for cheap.

we are not in hog heaven around here, not many breeders, so prices are uneconomically high for piglets. like, $5 to $10/lb...while finished hogs sell for a couple bucks.

there was a small farm near us in hell
the guy actually made a living raising heritage breed pigs and turkeys for the ann arbor and detroit restaurant markets

[Paul Pless]

this movie was great
and was filmed entirely in oregon

[Jimmy W]

Sumthing I didn't get out of so easy and so soon, hush hoggies hush

[Jimmy W]

I have a copy of this booklet and DVD that I bought from Steve. Miz Sally was his mother who suffered from dementia. One of the stories on the DVD.

171 Pound Hog · Rambling Steve Gardner

[Domesticated_Mr. Know It All]

[John of Phoenix]

We had some Berkshire Mangalistas, hairy pigs.

Looks like pig crossed with a sheep. On the outside anyway.

[JayInOz]

One of the reasons so many farms had a pig or two was that you can keep them going on just about any food. They will live on grass or grain or meat or milk or eggs or vegetables or any combination of those. I buy commercial pelleted pig food. I also dump a bag of wheat into a drum and cover it with water and the next day begin feeding it out- small shovel full per pig per meal. I also dump a barrow load of grass in to the pigs every time I mow, and also give them a lot of the weeds from the garden- dirt and all. If little pigs are kept in pens a shovel full of grass with the roots and soil attached is good for them and they really enjoy it.
LeeG I use welded sheep yard mesh for pens- it comes in 900mil by six metre lengths at the rural supply store- and corrugated steel roofing sheets laid horizontally, lot of overlap and the bottom sheet dug at least a foot into the ground. I've had the occasional escapee, but food gets them back in every time JayInOz

[LeeG]

Looks like pig crossed with a sheep. On the outside anyway.

Yeah, aside from them being real pigs somedays it looked like Muppets On Pig Ridge here. These guys seemed friendlier than the other mutts we got.

[Jimmy W]

Photo shot out of dining room window of house in Mississippi a few years ago. The pigs belonged to the people that lived in the house down the street that my aunt and uncle built. The pigs would wander around the area. Those folks moved away and took the pigs with them.

pot bellied pigs.jpg