talk about pigs

[L.W. Baxter]

i think we need a pig thread.

winston churchill said, "i like pigs. dogs look up to us. cats look down on us. pigs treat us as equals."

i don't know about all that, but i do think my lifestyle pumpkin farm needs a couple porkers.

who among us knows something about swine? anything really. hit me with it.

[SKIP KILPATRICK]

Be very careful what you ask for!

[mister fergus]

do these pigs eat a lot of food?

i'm not sure we have enough food around here for any pigs.

[SKIP KILPATRICK]

They are delicious! You can eat everything but the squeal!

[SKIP KILPATRICK]

From right down the road!

[Decourcy]

Cute when young. Bad attitude when they outweigh you

[bluedog225]

Those who forget history, etc

You survived cows. Why not?

https://slate.com/technology/2012/10...ll-people.html

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[Breakaway]

I saw Pink Floyd perform, Pigs (Three Different Ones), live, on two occasions.



Big man, pig man
Ha ha, charade you are
Woo!
You!
Well heeled big wheel
Ha ha, charade you are
And when your hand is on your heart
You're nearly a good laugh
Almost a joker
With your head down in the pig bin
Saying, "Keep on digging"
Pig stain on your fat chin
What do you hope to find?
Down in the pig mine
You're nearly a laugh
You're nearly a laugh
But you're really a cry
Bus stop rat bag
Ha ha, charade you are
You!
FXcked up old hag
Ha ha, charade you are
You radiate cold shafts of broken glass
You're nearly a good laugh
Almost worth a quick grin
You like the feel of steel
You're hot stuff with a hatpin
And good fun with a hand gun
You're nearly a laugh
You're nearly a laugh
But you're really a cry
Hey you, Whitehouse
Ha ha, charade you are
You!
House proud town mouse
Ha ha, charade you are
You're trying to keep our feelings off the street
You're nearly a real treat
All tight lips and cold feet
And do you feel abused?
You!
Gotta stem the evil tide
And keep it all on the inside
Mary, you're nearly a treat
Mary, you're nearly a treat
But you're really a cry

[Jim Bow]

The International Churchill Society reports the exact quote is, “I like pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.”

[Yeadon]

They never seem to know why they pulled you over.

[JayInOz]

I've had mostly Wessex Saddlebacks on and off for probably thirty years. Sold a lot cheap, gave quite a few away, eaten a few. With what I pay for feed I reckon my home grown bacon works out at about six hundred dollars a pound. They're economically viable if you can grow your own feed for them. Otherwise, get one or two sows, try to find a local boar you can use rather than have your own. Keep one or two suckers from a litter to grow out for your own freezer and sell the rest at a couple of months old before they've cost you anything for feed. And there's lots of tips and tricks for scalding and dehairing pigs. I just skin em and cut em up almost the same as sheep. Some roasts, a bunch of chops, lot of small chunks for stir fry and everything else minced. And don't put their pens at a low point in your yard. You will end up with a big depression full of mud and water that's really difficult to fix. And pigs like to sleep warm- they grow a lot better when they're warm too. Sawdust is pretty good but I cut lots of soft grasses with the scythe and turn it a couple of times with a pitchfork to make dry, soft, free bedding. Anything specific you want to know Lee? JayInOz

[Ian McColgin]

Pot belly pigs make good house pets - clean and get on with children. However, every pet pig owner I know complains about vet bills.

[TomF]

There's a reason some like the heritage breeds - Gloucester Old Spot are reputedly great for those looking for more lard and hams, while Tamworths are longer bodied, better for maximal bacon. Also are supposed to be feistier, but good at getting a fair amount of nutrition from pasture.

If you haven't read Joel Salatin about livestock, you oughta. He considers himself a grass farmer, who uses livestock rather surgically and precisely to provide key inputs for soil and plant health. And he makes money by selling them.

He uses pigs as rototillers for new areas to bring under cultivation, and has them living burrowed happy and deep in big straw piles in 3 sided shelters over winter, preparing the compost thereby for the spring spreading.

[Beowolf]

“Beware of any man who keeps a pig farm.”

[bluedog225]

It’s great you have people like us to help you with these important decisions….

[hawkeye54]

A 'neutral observer ' here - some years back ( late 1990's / early 2000's ) our son decided he may want a career as a pig / hog farmer - so the family drove around southeast Minnesota looking at hog farms for sale. My recollection was that you could smell the farm a mile or so before you arrived onsite. YMMV



Rick

[StevenBauer]

We had this for dinner tonight. Trying out recipes for Christmas dinner. Definite contender.




https://youtu.be/L5mL7VFtvvo


A friend raised a bunch a couple of years ago. He fed them stale bread from a local bakery and spent grain from a local brewery. Lots of work. Lots of mess. Very tasty.

[Jimmy W]

I remember my father and my uncle slaughtering a pig in the back yard. I was very young and don't remember which one had raised the pig. The pig probably came from Uncle Curly as I probably would remember us having one The main thing that I remember was them heating a 55 gallon barrel of water by building a fire around it.
My father back then would buy a calf or two at the stockyard auction in the spring, then take them back to sell in the fall/winter.

[Nicholas Carey]

My uncle was a hog farmer.

I can say that as a 10-year old, tramping around the woods and discovering the corpse of a hog that had escaped in the winter, froze to death and was now swollen and bloated can be a little traumatizing. And the smell? . . . Disgusting.

[LeeG]

I’m on the periphery of pig raising. We get 8-12 little ones, put em in a shelter for a week w electric fence inside it. Fed twice a day. After they get trained tothe electricwire they’re let out to the paddock that also has a couple hot fence wires that define it Each paddock is about 100’x100’ in a forest and bigger as they get bigger. They root up the fields too much so they get moved through the forest where there’s lots of acorns. They’re in each paddock about a month then moved to the adjacent one. I doubt they make economic sense but we do have good pork. The smoker is my prefered way to cook chops. The processor has complimented my daughter on the look of the meat and fat so we’re doing something right.
Like TomF mentioned there’s a whole thing to using them for domesticating the countryside but my take is they move what little top soil that exists on the ridges here and send it down hill. Chickens and sheep are more my thing. We take pigs to the processor.

Cherry wood in the smoker.

Paul Pless was right, they are stinky. But they do like a puddle in the heat. I do not hang out w them.

[John B]

I guess I know what's for dinner then......

[Paul Pless]

pork the one you love

[Tom from Rubicon]

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.

[Tom from Rubicon]

pork the one you love

Wise words from the boy from Alabama

[JayInOz]

[QUOTE=Tom from Rubicon;6764331
A porker given the chance will eat you or your kin given a chance.[/QUOTE]

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

[Canoeyawl]

They never seem to know why they pulled you over.

They're smart enough to get you to admit guilt on the spot.
Leaving them no choice, always leave them a choice "No pig I don't, why did you pull me over?"

[Garret]

No expert, but I've had pigs for 5 years - though non-consecutive. As said, younger ones are best/friendliest. Give them plenty of room - they are very clean animals & will set up the outhouse as far away from the food as they can + being able to get exercise will 1) make 'em happier & 2) make for leaner pork. Good stout wire fencing works best in my little experience. Only way to get an escaped pig back is to lead them with a bucket of feed - ain't no one ever had any luck pushing a pig.

I've heard stories of razorbacks eating people (they get to 1200 lbs!) - but not domestic pigs. Not saying it doesn't happen - just not something I ever worried about - particularly with pigs I'd raised. Buying a 2 YO boar might well be a different story.

[Jim Mahan]

An old guy is tooling along the two lane highway on his way to town and spots a pig by the side of the road. So he stops, and after a moment realizes that a pig wondering alongside the road could be dangerous for motorists and the pig, and spends a few minutes cajoling the pig into the car, and proceeds along his way.

A bit further down the road a cop pulls the old guy over after seeing a pig in his passenger seat, and while asking for the driver's license and registration, he asks the old guy about the pig.

After hearing about how he had found the pig wondering along the road, the cop tells him that he can't be driving around with a pig in his car. It just isn't done, and it's not safe. What if the pig interferes with the driving and causes a crash, and he tells him to take the pig somewhere appropriate, like the zoo.

An hour or so later, the cop sees the same old guy's car tooling back along the highway and can see the pig is still sitting in the passenger seat, so he pulls the car over, and walks up to the driver side and says to the old guy, "I thought I told you to take that pig to the zoo."

And the guy replies, "I did, and he had such a good time, now we're going to the ball game."

[L.W. Baxter]

well, like a lot of things farm related, i have some experience from my youth.

my folks kept pigs for a couple years on our dairy farm in wisconsin. a couple hundred feeders in a pole barn, banging away on the bins day and night. so i am familiar with the smell of too many pigs.

i am talking two or three little weaners here, not a hog farm.

there was one year, dad bought a pair of pregnant sows, one of them was "mine", bessy may, pictured prominently below. i recall she was $300 at auction. that's me in the highwater brown pants. my brother with the boots in the foreground. dad in the white tee. hired hand john anderson in the background. ma must have been behind the camera. circa 1979.

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so, i also know about herding pigs. also, riding them. i was once wiped off the back of a hog by a stantion in the milking barn.

[willin woodworks]

When I lived in NH back in the day lots of folks had pigs. Pigs and gardens traded places year after year. People would get three piglets as soon as they were weaned and grow them to about 200 LBS. There was a local butcher who would butcher one pig any way you wanted, packaged any way you wanted. In exchange he kept the other two.
You'd be surprised how much land a couple of pigs will clear in a summer...

[L.W. Baxter]

when bessy may farrowed, she naturally had a runt. which i tried to nurse to health. had to bury the little fella between corn rows.

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[Paul Pless]

cool family photos lee

[TomF]

There was a particularly grisly serial murderer in the 1990s out in British Columbia who ran a pig farm. He was convicted largely on the basis of bits of DNA recovered from pig dung, though other bits of DNA were recovered in stomach-churning places.

Nobody knows quite how many young women, mostly sex workers and addicts, went to "parties" at his farm, and ended up in the human food chain. Dozens were identified, IIRC, with many more bereaved families convinced that their daughter/sister had met her end there and the RCMP was covering up evidence, and had not investigated seriously because the women were often First Nations, as well as being sex workers and addicts. Went on for years, and was one significant impetus for more recent work reopening investigations into missing and murdered Indigenous women.

[Decourcy]

There was a particularly grisly serial murderer in the 1990s out in British Columbia who ran a pig farm. He was convicted largely on the basis of bits of DNA recovered from pig dung, though other bits of DNA were recovered in stomach-churning places.

Nobody knows quite how many young women, mostly sex workers and addicts, went to "parties" at his farm, and ended up in the human food chain. Dozens were identified, IIRC, with many more bereaved families convinced that their daughter/sister had met her end there and the RCMP was covering up evidence, and had not investigated seriously because the women were often First Nations, as well as being sex workers and addicts. Went on for years, and was one significant impetus for more recent work reopening investigations into missing and murdered Indigenous women.

I know people who attended parties on that farm. Not sex workers just regular people, and parties hosted by the brother, not R. P. himself. They had no idea. R.P. probably operated as a killer for a much longer time than we know. He bragged in jail about the number he had killed, and it was brushed off, but I’d be willing to bet it was more accurate than the official number.

[L.W. Baxter]

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