My Sugar Mountain Farm Blog located at http://SugarMtnFarm.com/blog/ is where I write stories about our family, farm, animals, life here at the little cottage in the big woods and other adventures. Some stories are entertaining, some are the beauty of our natural world here in Vermont, in others I share experiences we’ve had that may help other people with challenges homesteading and small farming. These are excerpts from our journey through life. Through the blog you can experience a virtual tour of our farm during all five seasons of the year.
Tip #1: You can always get to the Sugar Mountain Farm blog home page by clicking “Sugar Mountain Farm” in the upper left corner of the page above the header picture.
Tip #2: Many pictures are clickable so that you can take a closer look as you visit. Try it on the mini image of my blog at right.
Tip #3: Check out the tag cloud and the favorite articles in the right sidebar.
I also have another blog NoNAIS.org which is my work to protect our traditional rights to farm in an ever growing tangle of modern regulatory complexity.
Hi! We are trying to raise pigs (mulefoots and tamworths) the best we can and now going into winter are wondering about water and what you do in your rotational grazing system. Thanks!
Winter water in a freezing climate is hard. Literally. We have warm springs and live on a hillside which make it easier. In short the best waterers we’ve come up with have ground heating help and a micro-climate which shelters them. Think of a barrel set into the ground within a small greenhouse like shelter or a cave. Sometime I’ll write in more detail on winter watering.
Thanks for sharing your experiences at sugar mountain farm its really entertaining and also thanks for showing beauty of our natural world……
Hi Walter, We just had two sows farrow in the last week who were bred by a boar (Ajax) you sold to Gopher Broke Farm. It was a first litter for both and they each had 14 piglets that seem to be doing quite well, growing fast and learning from mom to root in the soil. They’re starting to wonder about the wider world, which leads me to my question for you; when you start to train piglets to electric wire? I’d like to have them trained to single/double strand but I don’t know when the proper time to start the training is.
Thanks as always Walter,
Will
We train to electric fence from birth. There are electric fences. The piglets eventually find one and discover it is not to be messed with. This is an advantage of raising them out on pasture from the start. You don’t really need to worry about when to start training.
Haven’t seen any info on this yet. What do you do about vaccinations? From what I have been reading it is important to vaccinate against erisphilis{sp}. Bessy our bip spot that we bought at auction already bred had 8 babies that are a week old, so we will be attempting that soon.
What to vaccinate against depends greatly on your location, what is an issue in your area and how much exposure your pigs have from the outside. FarrowSure Gold B is a good overall vaccine that covers many of the problems including the disease you mentioned. Sometime I’ll write in detail about vaccines. My immediate suggestion would be for you to check with your state department of agriculture to find out what diseases are of issue in your area.
Hello,
I see you live in Vermont. What town? We live in Mass near Sturbridge and are talking about getting a piglet. Your site is very interesting. I will show it to my husband and talk a bout it. Thank you, Kerry
We’re just east of Barre-Montpelier. See the piglets page for information about piglets to raise.
Hi Kerry,
Me and my girlfriend are thinking about breeding pig’s, we live in the UK & she actually own’s a farm with other live-stock e.g. Sheep’s, cow’s. What things should we consider before looking into pig breeding?
Thanks
That’s a very big question. There are a lot of breeds. We base our herd primarily on Yorkshire with the addition of Large Black and Berkshire plus some others. See Breeds of Swine for lots of examples.
I’m just wondering if you could help. This is my third year raising pigs but my first year in the winter. I house the pig in a 11by 14 building with a wooden floor and a huge running pen. But with it getting cold here in NY. I have been keeping them in. But one of my two is having trouble walking on his hind leg. I checked his feet for sores or blisters but realized his ankles are swollen. They both are about two months old. I have never had this problems or seen this before. Thank you.
I suspect that your winters in NY are no colder that what we get here in the mountains of northern central Vermont since we’re far farm any lake or river effects. Our pigs are still out in the fields enjoying the weather and will be for quite a while. The foot sores and blisters you’re describing sound like perhaps the animals came in contact with some plant that had an irritating oil or nettle. That is my first guess. It is hard to tell without more info. Check your pastures for what might be causing that. If you figure it out I would love to hear what you discover.
I am looking to raise some pigs next spring and would like to learn for to butcher and process do you offer anything or would you be willing to teach me.
thank you
John
John, go to the Piglets page which you can find in the Products menu at the top. It is very important to reserve early because by mid-winter spring piglets are typically already sold out and we’re into June deliveries. We already have many reservations for 2012 piglets.
As to learning how to butcher, I strongly recommend that you get the DVD series by Cole Ward about butchering. He is a master butcher and an excellent teacher. We apprenticed for eighteen months with Cole to learn commercial meat cutting for opening our own on-farm butcher shop. Note that you don’t have to have fancy equipment or even a bone saw. For years I simply did our butchering for our family with a sharp knife, stone, steel, bucket of warm water and a few pans. I deboned everything so that it was easy to then slice boneless chops with the knife. Dechining lets you have rib bones in which you simply slice between – no need for a saw. Deboning saves freezer space too. As I worked I would put the bones into a pot for making soup. Meat would get wrapped for the freezer or canned in mason jars. This keeps it simple.
For your first time doing slaughter I would recommend having someone help you who is skilled at the process of stunning, killing, bleeding, gutting and cleaning the pig. After you spend six months raising the pig you’ll want to be sure you get that critical part of the process right and do it humanely. If the animal is stressed during slaughter it can ruin the meat. If you’re not selling the meat you can do it on-farm at your homestead yourself or with the aid of an itinerant slaughterer. If you are selling the meat then the regulations in most places require that the animal be killed in an inspected facility. If you are selling across state lines then the requirement raises to USDA (federal) inspected facility in the USA.
How much money do you say it costs to raise a piglet to slaughter? I’ve been thinking about doing it for a while, but I was worried about the costs involved. Were pretty strapped for cash atm.
That’s a very complicated question because it depends on how many pigs you’re raising and how you do it.
There is infra-structure such as fencing. If you just raise one pig then all that gets costed to the single pig. If you raise four pigs then divide it by four to get the per pig cost. Even there it will vary greatly depending on your management style – pasture, pens, etc. Figure on $100 to $500 depending on how fancy you get.
There is the cost of the piglet. See our Piglet page for current pricing. Currently boar piglets are $150 as of the winter of 2011. This varies greatly with location and with the time of year that you buy as well as the sex of the pig. You also get what you pay for. Don’t buy culls. Some people bring in truck loads of cull pigs from the confinement farms. These pigs aren’t growing well enough for the big operators to keep them so they dispose of them. Instead, put your money into better quality pigs that were born locally. They’ll have a leg up on thriving in your climate. Also look to get pigs from someone who is doing it the way you want to raise your pigs. I’ve heard of many a disaster where people took factory farm pigs and tried to put them on pasture or even simply not feeding the commercial hog feed. Those pigs have been bred for one diet and climate control. Without it they don’t thrive.
Then there is feed. A pig eats about 700 to 1,000 lbs of feed depending on the pig (some are more efficient), the time of year (colder means energy goes to body heating), how big you got the pigs at, how big you’re raising them to and what is in the feed. Note that after about 250 lbs the gain to feed ratio declines. If you’re buying grain then price it locally for 800 lbs and that will give you a guestimate as to the cost of the feed. Figure on about $200 as a rough guess. This will vary with what you choose (organic, GMO, Chinese Melamine, etc) and how large a quantity you buy at a time.
Alternatively you can raise them on pasture and augment with dairy like we do, grain or other good foods. This dramatically cuts the cost of the feed and it increases the quality of the pork. The flavor of the pork is set in the fat during the last two weeks to a month of the pig’s life. Apples, nuts and other good foods are great choices.
There may be some other incidental costs but that is most of it. Figure on spending about $450 to $850.
Then once you have the pig raised up you need to turn it into pork, sausage, hams and bacon. If you hire this done then figure on $150 to $200. This varies greatly with the region.
Grand total of about $600 to $1050 plus your time depending on how you do it. See the article on What is a Half Pig Share which will give you some weights to work with. Note that this is a real rough write up of the costs and they’ll vary greatly depending on a lot of factors.
I am considering raising pigs.
I have a virtually unlimited supply of whey available. I am wondering how much different breeds can drink? I have read anywhere from 2–6 gallons per day. I am also curious about the cost ratio of different sized pigs.
It’s not the breed but rather the size of the pig that matters. You’ll also need to get them accustom to drinking whey and feed a high fiber diet (e.g., pasture) along with the whey. See the right sidebar and look in the tag cloud for the Feeding topic. Lots of articles there to get you started. Yogurt is useful.