This past Monday we weaned most of the piglets from the winter farrowing. Actually, the sows had started weaning the piglets two days earlier which made the process that much easier. The mothers began sleeping in a far garden, moving up there stealthily when the piglets were asleep. This seems to have gone over fine. During the day they were still letting the piglets nurse a little.
In the factory farm pork industry they currently wean piglets at 10 days. The goal being to get the sows back into production, that is to say pregnant, as soon as possible. There is discussion in the swine industry magazines about increasing this to 15 days. We have generally weaned at about four weeks (30 days). For two litters we experimented with letting them self-wean – they didn’t. After 60 days, the now quite large piglets were still nursing away and the sows were getting a bit peaked, so I forced the issue.
When one week old, the piglets start nibbling on hay in the winter and grass and clover in the summer out on pasture. We begin creep feeding at that time. A creep is simply a place where the piglets can easily get to food but the larger pigs can’t. This means there is always food available to the piglets. It is quite simple to make a creep – just run a hot electric wire about 6″ higher than the back of the piglets across a space like the wire to the left in the photo above. The large pigs will see that wire and keep back giving the little piglets a space where they can eat in peace.
We start creep feeding the piglets with yogurt, cottage cheese and bread. It is important not to feed them straight fresh cows milk since they can get scours, that is to say diarrhea. To make yogurt or cottage cheese, simply fill a clean pail with about four gallons of milk. Add a dollop of cottage cheese or yogurt. In a warm place this will quickly turn the milk making it more digestible for the piglets. This is essentially the same as the expensive pro-biotic that you can buy for livestock. We have excess milk and cheese so this works well for us.
Alternatively, you can buy a piglet mash but be aware that they usually have antibiotics and other chemical additives in them. These are put in for confinement type operations which are more susceptible to disease than open pasture and garden corral setups like ours. I worry about the antibiotics causing resistant types of bacteria to develop so I prefer to avoid feeding these to our animals.
There is another issue that I read about recently. Some people have linked the use of genetically modified corn and soybeans with animal deaths. I don’t know if this is true but it makes me uncomfortable so that is one more reason to avoid the commercial feeds if I can.
After several weeks, the piglets are eating the alternative foods well and the sows are milked down and ready to wean their piglets. They may even do it themselves as has happened here on occasion. If not, simply lure the sows away from the piglets during a time when the piglets are sleeping or busy eating in their creep. Electrified poultry netting works well as a surround for the piglets during the first day of weaning when they may be a bit unhappy with the change. Sometimes they don’t seem to even notice, other times they may call out for an hour or two before settling down. Leaving them in the space they are familiar with and moving the sow out helps.
During the weaning period I find it is a great time to establish myself as the source of food and goodness. When I bring out food I squat down and talk to them as they eat. Prior to weaning some of them had been coming up to me. Now all of them run up to me in a great rush of little bodies, squealing their greetings.
About three days to a week after weaning the sow will come back into heat, so if you are doing AI or borrowing a boar be ready if you wish to rebreed her. Since we have our own boar now this is greatly simplified. He lives with the herd and is right there, ready, willing and able. And so the cycle of life begins anew.
Wednesday: 22°F/9°F, Light snow flurries, Sunny
Thursday: 20°F/6°F, Light snow flurries, Partly Sunny
Friday: 14°F/11°F, Light snow flurries, Partly Sunny
So cute!!!!
Excellent way of making good wholesome nutritious animal food. I have read before about your creativity with feeding. I wish I could get extra milk and stuff. It is such good food. I have read about people feeding it ot chickens to.
Hi, Walter. Do you mind telling where you get all you milk – in general, not specifically? In Ohio it’s illegal to sell raw milk for any purpose and now the ODA is cracking down on cow-share arrangements.
Joe,
We get the milk from local dairies. They have excess and are not allowed to put it down the drain. Sometimes it is a case where they had too much coming in and not enough going out so they had to get rid of the old to make room for the new. Sometimes it is an error in a batch such as 2% that got bottled into a 1% milk jug. Sometimes it is milk that is a day out of date. None of that is a problem for the pigs – it is good wholesome milk.
We also get cheese trim, excess sour-cream, yogurt and cottage cheese from another dairy. We just picked up 1200 lb load from them that was going to go out of date in three days. At that point it is not worth their shipping it out too stores because it wouldn’t have enough shelf time.
Cheers,
-Walter
thanks for the posts, hope to grow/raise food for my family some day. i like your ideas of housing those animals.
hi walter, always enjoy your site.funny story about the government know it all.all too common i’m sad to say.well we got the pig bug after viwewing your site, we started with two cut boars and learned a lot.this year we had 3 sows, held one back and bought her a nice mate. next is trying our hand at pig breeding.we dont have a big pasture, but we do the slop thing and our pigs are FDA-approved-grain-free and the poultry is on its way to grain free also. i will say, we planted potatoes in the area our pigs tilled and fertilized for us the year prior and whoa! some awesome spuds did grow. so did gourds, tomatoes, and peppers to our delight. i have all the food i can possibly eat. farming is rather addicting.anyways thanks for the brine recipe. congratulations on your new freezer you lucky duck! my husband is determined to build a large smoker mostly cuz we are cheap…er …thrifty. i do have a question it would be swell if you comment on in your blog. we have a few acres of scrub we would like our pig friends to clear for us, with teh amount of weeds, we were wondering if barbed wire would be a better solution? whats your opinion. thanks and god bless you, the burrills from massachusetts.
Andrea, I’ve never used barbed wire. I have picked a lot of it out of the woods. I hate the stuff. It is a danger to me, our kids, our dogs, wildlife, animals, etc. Nasty stuff. I would strongly suggest not using it.
What we use is high tensile electric, polywire, poultry netting and woven wire depending on the situation. Pigs are very respectful of electric fences once they are trained to them. See these posts.
Hi Walter – you have a great site and blog. I notice that you sell live piglets – at what age do you sell them/let them go to a new owner?
They are generally about four to six weeks old at weaning time. We usually keep them for a week or more after weaning before they leave here to make sure they have acclimated to life without mom.
Thank you for all of your down to earth information on rearing your animals. Referencing your site has been a godsend many a time. We also raise all of my animals free range on pasture together, and yes we also lose the odd hen to a pig, hahaha, such is nature. Horses, cattle, pigs, sheep and chickens. We do have the odd appearance around here of the SPCA attempting to interfere in some of our ways to which they obviously don’t understand, but have never been charged as our animals are all fat ‘n happy as they are. I suppose it comes down to some city folk invading the country and bringing their strange ways along with them instead of joining in our country spirit. We also tap into the “outdated” milk supply from the local dairy, as they cannot flush it down the drain anymore. Thanks again for all of your experience and ideas. Keep up the fantastic work–you have done fabulously!
Walter….
thanks to a friend i’m getting leftover milk from a dairy. how long after you put the yogurt or cottage cheese in with the milk to you then feed to your pigs? thanks so much for your time, it’s certainly appreciated.
KT
KT,
You can use it immediately but it will have more volume of the good bacteria and more converted dairy (the yogurt) if you give it time. How much time depends on the volume of milk to volume of starter culture ratio you used and the temperature you keep it at. From what I’ve read, the ideal temperature for culturing yogurt is about 100째F to 110째F.
Merry Christmas!
-Walter
hey,
Nice site, a lot of usefull information.
Just wondering what you do with the weaned piglets, do you put them back in the same pasture as the sows or seperate them till their full grown.
thanks for the info.
Mario
Mario,
The weaner piglets have to be separated from the sows for at least a month to break them of the habit of nursing and to let the sows dry up and come back into condition. Otherwise it is too hard on the sow and she gets nursed down and peakid from providing milk to eight to fourteen hungry growing pigs. Realize that at that point they may weigh 30 to 60 lbs so their combined weight can easily be greater than her. Their pestering her for nursing becomes a real problem for her.
The solution is we move weaning pigs into an area separate from the sows and then eventually they progress into the grower and finisher fields. We often have our herds split up during the summer in particular so there are breeding sows in those latter areas too but they are not nursing.
Cheers,
-Walter
Hi again Walter, getting so I come to your site every evening after chores. Hubby and I are considering breeding one of our boars and are about to "acquire" a gilt, (same way we got the 2 boars, just seem to "acquire" them). My question, how long is a sow pregnant? Sorry if that is a stupid question, I just haven't read that info on your site – yet. Thanks so much for your time, posts, pics and willingness to help all.
I'll answer June in Maine:
3 months, 3 weeks, 3 days (and 3 in the morning as someone told me). I'm waiting on our first ever litter, from a sow I got from Walter. It has been fascinating to watch the day-by-day change in the sow's body over the course of the last few weeks. First her teats turned pink and then started to grow. She has 12 teats! This morning I noticed that her belly has really rounded out and down. If my calculations are correct she is due sometime between Feb. 28 and March 3rd. I happened to be there for that mating. Lucky me, huh? The reason I came by Sugar Mountain blog was to gather information and Walter did not disappoint. Hi Holly!
I have just gotten back into raising pigs. I love them. I have a sow that just had 8 piglets. You said that they are ready to wing at 4 to 6 weeks of age. Do I need to worm them or give them any kind of meds before I sell them? And can the sons of the sow breed the mother? And we built a large pen on concrete is that safe for them?
Thank You for good info
Susan in Texas
In southern areas like Texas you’re more likely to have a worm issue since you don’t have winter killing off the parasite population so worming them is probably a good idea. There are natural wormers like garlic, diary, pumpkin seeds, hot pepper, etc. See this article. You can also use one of the several commercial wormers based on Ivermec or Fenbendazole often sold under the name of SafeGuard. A fecal lets you know for sure if it is necessary and what species of parasites if there are any.
You can breed the boar piglets back to the mother sow. This won’t produce monsters and probably won’t even have any problems unless you’ve got genetic defects to start with. If you do get genetic problems showing up you know that those animals are not a good breeding choice. Always use the rule of “breed the best of the best and eat the rest” to improve the quality of your herd.
We don’t raise our pigs on concrete or in pens, ours are all out on pasture, so I can’t make any recommendations on the last question. I do know that a lot of people raise pigs on concrete. I’ve read there can be foot and leg issues as well as sores from the concrete. My guess is that providing plenty of bedding such as hay, straw or wood chips will help with that.
Good luck!
-Walter
Hi Walter and family…
I breed rarebreed pigs freerange, in Ireland (on a much smaller scale than yours) I have Gloucester Old Spots and Middle whites. Surprised to hear that you start weaning at such an early age, and also shocked to hear that the commercial pig industry in the US start weaning at 10 days!!! Didn’t think this was possible. The commercial producers in Ireland (and probably most if not all of the European Union) wean at five weeks which I would consider that very early from a piglet welfare point of view. I wean at 8 weeks at the earliest and its usually a minimum of 9 weeks (gone to 12 weeks on one occasion). This certainly takes it out of the sow, but gives a great start to the piglets/weaners.
I think your site is fantastic, informative and entertaining(where on earth do you get the time) and indeed I think what you are doing with your pigs is fantastic. I will be a regular visitor..
See ya.
Bref
Bref, the age we wean at varies with the season and also with the so. We work to balance the needs of the sow against that of the piglets. By four weeks of age the piglets are grazing and drinking whey. Since we free feed dairy they are able to continue getting dairy throughout their lives – it doesn’t end at weaning, whether we wean at four weeks or eight weeks. Since we don’t feed high calorie grain diets we have to very carefully watch that the mothers don’t get nursed down. Some sows lines are better at this such as Blackie, Flora and others that maintain their condition very well.
Thanks Walter, very interesting. I want to move away from grain/commercial feed so you insights are invaluable. What age would you normally kill at (other than what you might have been requested for). Do you aim for a specific weight or a balance of weight /age? I kill at about 6-7 months for fresh pork but if I am going to get to doing bacon will probably have to go to 9-10 months. The Middle white breed I have are early finishers and can be killed at 4-5 months, small carcase though…supposed to be the best pork pig though.
Generally our pigs are 6 to 8 months old at slaughter as finishers which is about 250 lbs live weight / 180 lbs hanging weight. The variance in time depends on the season with pigs growing faster in the warm months. Ours are primarily Yorkshire which is the Large White breed plus some Berkshire, Glouster Old Spot, Large Black and other breeds mixed and selected over the generations for how they perform in our climate.
I just bought a 4 week old Yorkshire Hampshire cross. I’ve had it a couple days now and it seems to be in good health but for some reason it keeps stumbling. It falls on it’s front legs down to the ground and then gets back up. It’s eating and drinking good and it’s not on any medications or anything. I’m not for sure if it has some sort of disease or maybe if it has joint problems. Have you ever seen this before?
I’m not sure, Ryan. I’ve not seen that. My first thought is infectious arthritis. I would use the disease problem solver on ThePigSite and see what that comes up with. Let me know what you find and how the pig does.
Hi there Walter,
Wonder if you could give me an idea of how well weaner pigs do in cooler weather.
We recently got 14 weaners and put them on a small pasture, they have a small wooden house with lots of bedding, they all fit inside at this point, but our weather has turned cooler and now I’m worried. (for the last 2 years we only raised 6 pigs and had them in a small pen in our little barn) I couldn’t fit the 14 weaners inside so made they are out side and are able to go in the little house as they want. The problem is we found one dead today when we came home from work. I dont’ know what was wrong. it was in the back of the house and was still warm to touch but was under the others. It didn’t have any serious marks or wounds. The temperature has dropped to freezing (0 degrees C) and we have had some wet snow. What do you think? Tonight we wrapped the house with plastic to make sure there the draft is as little as possible. Is there anything else I should do or should I try and find indoor space for them?
thanks for any input.
Melissa Comyn
Paisley Ontario Canada
They do fine. 0°C (32°F) is not particularly cold. We breed, gestate, farrow, nurse, wean and grow out pigs all year round, in every month. We’re in the mountains of northern Vermont which is a climate that is probably like yours. When it gets below -20°F the pigs don’t particularly like it but realize that within their hay piles there is a micro-climate that is much warmer. Getting out of the wind, even at those low temperatures, makes it pretty much okay. So a moderate temperature like 0°F or the much warmer 0°C is quite pleasant.
Provide them with a roof, walls that block the prevailing wind, plenty of dry bedding and plenty of calories and liquid water. They’ll be fine. The one you found dead is not an issue of temperature, there’s something else going on. Some pigs simply don’t survive weaning. They lack the ability to eat anything but mother’s milk, or they can’t survive without her antibodies, they may need minerals, etc. Without knowing more, doing a necropsy, etc it is hard to say what it is.
What ever you do, do not wrap the house with plastic. You want the pigs to have fresh air. Locking in the stale air is bad for them.