Everything you ever wanted to know about raising hogs
Raising hogs is a great way to make your family self-sufficient in case tragedy ever strikes the world. Wouldn’t it be great to have a constant supply of meat for your family? Raising hogs is also a very common 4-H project for young people, so you may find yourself trying to find a crash course in this type of agriculture to help your young one.
Hogs are very intelligent animals, and this is shown in how easily they can get out of fences. In order to raise hogs, you will need a supply of mud that’s easily accessible for them. This is because hogs roll around in mud to cool off. You’ll also need a pen with a gate that is very difficult to open. Pigs love to roam, so you shouldn’t underestimate their ability to get out of a closed gate.
If you want to get started raising hogs for the first time, the easiest way is to buy a young pig in the early spring. Make sure you purchase the pig from a reliable breeder. You can spend all summer fattening it up, and then by the fall, the pig should be big enough to supply enough pork for your family for the next year or so. A 250-pound pig will supply you with 170 pounds of pork when it’s butchered.
As with pets, the health of your hogs is very important. If you also have a garden, then leftover produce is a great way to make sure your hogs get the nutrition they need. Hogs will eat just about anything, but you want their diets to be full of concentrated grains and low in fiber. You should also make sure your pigs get plenty of protein. You may want to consider adding an antibacterial compound to your hogs’ food to lower your feeding costs and help your pigs grow faster and larger. An antibacterial compound is especially important if you are starting with a younger pig. Water is also a very important part of a pig’s diet. Give your hogs as much water as they can drink.
You’ll be able to tell if something is wrong with the pigs if they have a poor appetite, rough coat, or just look sick. Other clues include diarrhea and inactivity. A pig’s body temperature should always be about 102.5. If it’s two degrees or more higher than that you should call a veterinarian right away.
If you’re raising hogs for show instead of food, then there are many other things to keep into consideration. Start with the date of the show you plant to enter your pigs in, and then count backwards from there. Your show hogs need to be between 200 and 240 pounds. You can plan for about one and a half pounds of weight gain per day, so you can plan the size of your feeder pig before you begin to make sure that the animal will be in the right weight range on the day of the show.