Keep writing great articles Walter and if I were you I would skip that magazine. Too rude.

What we do is we manage the grazing of the larger livestock. In our case that is sheep and larger pigs, grower through breeder. I don’t even worry about the piglets as they follow the herd. They’ll creep to some other places which is good. The ducks, chickens and geese naturally follow the larger grazing animals without my needing to manage them. This is much easier and more like natural grazing patterns.

Our working dogs guard and herd all the animals. I don’t have one specifically for doing just one job. They’re more powerful and flexible, have longer working lives, if they are cross trained. As they get older they do more gentle tasks such as watching piglets and poultry.

In the winter we feed our poultry primarily meat – something we have – since the deep snows make other foods inaccessible. In the warm months they eat insects (their primary job), grubs, worms, break apart manure patties and eat plants (grass, clover, etc). I don’t have a number for you on birds per acre since we don’t operate that way. We have had as many as 400 layers in a flock fanning out about 500 to 700 feet from their central roosting spot. Some also sleep in trees. If you used a 500′ diameter circle it would come to 20 acres for 400 birds or about 20 birds per acre. Hmm… that does not sound right as I do not think they were ranging across that much space. So much for back of the napkin scratchings. The area they cover is not perfectly circular. Based on what I know of our field sizes I would say that they were ranging over more like seven to ten acres so about 40 birds per acre. That’s about 1,000 sq-ft per bird over the warm months and is sustainable with them co-grazing with other animals. Take that with a grain of salt or two. It will vary with your climate, soil, etc, etc.

I don’t know what “store bought mtl” is. We do not buy grain or commercial hog feed so the answer to your question is probably yes.

We have raised three sets, no, wait, it was four sets of pigs just on pasture. They grow more slowly taking around eight months to get to finisher size and are very lean. Virtually no back fat. If I had nothing else I would do this.

By adding dairy to their diet they get the lysine, an amino-acid, that is low in pasture and their growth rate increases so they get to market weight in about six month which is the same as with grain fed diets. The dairy also gives a delightful sweet flavor to the meat and fat. We have a free source of dairy from a butter and cheese maker just across the mountain from us. If I did not have that I would start my own dairy just to get the milk to feed the pigs.

We also now grow a lot of pumpkins, beets, turnips, sunflowers and such during the summer in the pig’s winter paddocks. This uses the wonderful nutrients the pigs have provided and turns that into food for the pigs in the late fall and winter.

Sometimes we also get other things as described in the diet section of the pigs page. A bit of dated bread makes a wonderful training treat since the pigs rarely get it. This helps with weekly loading of pigs for market. Look around your area for what resources are readily available. There is much that otherwise goes to waste which makes great livestock food. By feeding it to animals you can keep it out of the landfill and keep it from going down the chaos slope.

As someone said above, ignore them. They aren’t worth bothering with.

Also wondering about the dogs protecting the birds. I know you can do it, but my worries are that I have 2 LGD’s guarding the sheep one pasture ahead of the birds, and if I bring in another LGD for the birds, the new dog will just want to go play with the other two rather than protect birds? Is the answer to just have the 2 LGD’s protect both birds and sheep collectively by having a passable (for the dogs to crawl under) cross fence?

While I’m asking questions, if you don’t provide any supplemental feed for your chickens, how many chickens per acre are you comfortable with?

Have you tried not supplementing your hogs with store bought mtl?

You are amazing, thanks for all the info you provide. !