Raising pigs..(small breeds)

[jcjersey]

Hello - When starting your breeding operation. How many sows/gilts did you start out with, and is 1 boar plenty? Or should a person do a boar along with a "fixed" male pig(that would be used for meat) and keep them separated from the girls. And only allow them to mingle when you want a breeding to happen. Or don't own a boar at all.. Have 3-4 sows/gilts around. AI or borrow a boar when the time comes. And only males on the property would be fixed feeders for future meat?

We have 6 acres. 1 horse, 2 cows. They barely put a dent in our spring summer fall pasture. I have a very good deal on hay for the fall winter. I have a great source for fresh reasonably priced grain. My husband knows  how to do all the butchering as he has hunted deer and elk his entire life. We do not want large breed pigs to keep. We purchased two feeder large breed this year that were raising, but they take an ungodly amount of grain to grow. So we started researching other alternatives. And fell in love with the kune kune and AGH breeds! So I get my "pet" pigs that don't require near as much feed. And we get to have fresh home grown meat! Hubby loves there size. So its a win win.

We currently have two little kune kune 6 week old gilts. Im also looking to pick up a few AGH to throw in the mix. Our goal is to breed and raise all our own pork. Sell what we don't need to pet or meat or as breeding stock homes.

Would 2 kune kune sows 2 AGH sows and 1 boar be to much for breeding stock?! I already have people wanting to be on a list for pork down the road. Not looking to make money at all.. Just be able to raise our own food, and "maybe" have them pay for there grain etc somewhat but not needed.

Thanks!!

[haecklers]

If each sow has 6 babies per litter and 2 litters a year, then 4 sows would give you 48 babies a year. My experience has been that people who say they're going to buy piglets don't show up half the time, wasting way too much of my time! Why not figure out how many piglets you want in a year (range) and then get just enough sows to give you your minimum number. I'd think the 2 kune kunes would be enough and use the guinea hog boar on them - you could even eat him after a year, replacing him with another young one since they eat more the bigger they get, and they keep growing for at least 3 years. Maybe you could trade male piglets with someone else to bring in new genes without having to pay high prices each time.

[jcjersey]

so its ok to have males and females living together all the time?

[simplynaturalfarm]

Well, yes except for the issue with having piglets when you don't want them! I kept my boar in with the sows as long as they were pregnant - and he broke through the fences when they weren't

You can't choose to do AI with Kune Kune or AGH as it is not possible to find it. You could try other semen on them (lots of people doing large breed hogs on small without it affecting piglet size), but otherwise you need a boar.

I would grow into the pig market - do not get into it thinking you will sell a lot of piglets because it doesn't happen all the time. Trying to figure out what to do with 40 piglets is not fun. . . IF you had 2 kune kunes you could still get 20 ish piglets per year and have tons to sell.

[jcjersey]

I dont plan to breed all at once. I plan to stagger the litters out so we can have different ages and sizes of pigs to butcher eventually. Obviously we have a year before they can even be bred as i cant find adult pigs to purchase.
So two girls and one boy to start would be just fine then.

[haecklers]

Mine breed at 6 months and have their first litter at 10 months. Not sure why you want to wait a year.

I keep the sows and boars together, but I have better luck if I separate the sows out just before they give birth (or just after if I didn't catch it in time!) because a crowd of pigs when they're tiny and weak seems to make them more likely to get squished when they do the "pig pile". Tho that's much more a risk in winter than summer when they tend to spread out a bit anyway. My sows treat the boars like a rock star - they like to be around him unless he's annoying them by trying to breed when they aren't in heat. I had one do that.

6 is a conservative estimate - they may have more. If they started having 8 piglets per litter, you'd have 64 to find homes for!

Also, when you plan out your grazing, remember in about a year you'll not only have your breeders but all sizes of the offspring that are growing out to eating size. Which takes around 9 months for the smaller heritage breeds. So the amount of pasture will seem a lot smaller and more crowded then!

On the upside, we are managing to find people who want the older, unsold piglets pretty easily - and there's a new website, earthineer.com where you can find people to barter things like pigs for things like mushroom logs or maple syrup. There's been a fair amount of interest lately in people buying live pigs and then butchering them here with our help - we haven't done any yet but are finding a lot of people who are interested.

[jcjersey]

I have read everywhere that one year is best for small breeds. Ten months at earliest.im more concerned about healthy pigs then having piglets ASAP. I'm hoping to be able to have them so that the breedings end up being when one is about to pop. One is being bred. And to give longer breaks in between breedings so that it's more like 1.5 liters a year. Unless accidents happen of course. And if it became to much it would be easy to butcher the dad and have a break. There is no one close to me doing the smaller breeds I'm having to go at least an hour to find any. And even big pigs are being hard to find everyone is buying them up quickly.

[Nonesuch Melissa]

I have 2 AGH sows, each has farrowed 1 litter, 2 gilts coming on breeding age, and one boarling who is ready to get the job done.

We bred Red Wattle and GOS for years and like the little pigs too. I always kept the pigs together as a herd and they provided year round piglets. Our weather is mostly suitable except a few days of extremes so that helps. I've never had any trouble keeping the boars with piglets as a matter of fact my RW boar seemed to enjoy the little guys once they got close to weaning age but was gentle with them even at a few days old.

Pasture raised pigs are not stressed like confinement pigs and tend to have good dispositions... and if they don't they are still tasty.

[karenp]

Given the prices I've seen for KuneKunes, they are some expensive pigs. Wouldn't you make more on the piglets breeding them to a KuneKune boar and getting pure bred KuneKunes?

[rosalind]

My Mulefoots bred around 9 months old, so were a little over a year at farrowing. I had two sows and a boar.

When the sows farrowed, I put the boar in his own pen and he was very content on his own. Maybe a bit lonely, but not caring enough to leave.

The Mulefoots consistently had 6 piglets, and if you made sure they lived the first few days, you were usually home free. I got $100-200 per piglet, so while I got less piglets, I got a LOT more money for them, so that totally made it okay for me.

The cross-breds (Large Black x Mulefoot) only ever sold as meat animals, I couldn't find anyone to buy the cross-breds for breeding. The Mulefoots were a hot commodity, always sold out, but farrowing in the fall makes for a much more difficult sale because of time of year...

[jcjersey]

U only get those over priced prices for kune kune if u have registered stock and can find people wiling to pay those prices. Im in this for meat, so 1500 for a baby pig to raise for meat is out of the question. I got my kune kunes for only 100 a peice. Guinea hogs are same price.

[karenp]

Wow, great deal.

[pubwvj]

We started with four gilts.

My rule of thumb is that to justify the cost of a boar it takes three sows if by land (pasture) and six if by seed (grain fed).

We keep our boars with our sows in herd groups. I've never had a boar harm piglets.

We do managed rotational grazing. It is important to have paddocks be small enough so that the animals will eat up the forages within two weeks, preferably less time. If the paddocks are too large you get cherry picking, weed build up and soil compaction on preferred areas like with free ranging - not good.

-Walter