Which breed of pig would you favour for beginners?

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Which breed of pig would you favour for beginners?
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High Green Farm

Joined: 30 Nov 2004
Posts: 349
Location: Mid-Suffolk

Posted: Tue Jan 17, 06 11:06 am Post subject:

Mary-Jane wrote:

1) There is a very, very boggy/muddy area of several square yards right in front of the tin shack which is still damp even in high summer - and a complete mud bath the rest of the year. Would this be a problem?

I wouldn't worry about it - the rest of your pig area will look like that pretty soon anyway! If you are worried, then perhaps digout the area that is muddy, and put some limestone/type 1/crushed concrete/ crusher run or whatevre it is called in your neck of the woods!

Mary-Jane wrote:

2) The tin shack is very large (roughly the size of a single garage) would it not be better to build a 'cosier' arc with a proper floor which can then be moved around and presumably more easily cleaned?

I'd tend to do that...if you can wait a week or so, I'll be publishing an article on how to make a pig house!

Mary-Jane wrote:

3) The fact that the pigs are the far end of the 4 acre field makes for a long walk there and back to feed them (the sheep come to us when called) and check on them...and even further to run after them if they escape! So would it be better to fence off an area closer to our main living/working area (i.e. closer to the kitchen garden) for the pigs?

Perhaps. I think it partly depends on how good your fencing is going to be. If you are just going to use electric, then they will escape at some point! We have post and rail with stock wire, and electric at the bottom....touch wood no escapes yet. But we can't afford for them to escape, as I am an hour and a half away in London!

Mary-Jane wrote:

4) If half an acre sufficient for two weaners to have a happy life, or should we subdivide and rotate the pigs within that area to allow part of it to 'rest'?

Plenty, but rotation can only be a good thing, and I would do it with that much land.

Mary-Jane wrote:

5) Should we go for (bearing in mind all the discussions and suggestions above) two bog standard weaners this year, just to 'see how we get on' and then plan the next move after that?

Unless you are breeding, then I think breed is not so important, but certainly go for one of the rare breeds. BPA site has good info and comparisons. https://www.britishpigs.org.uk/breedlist.htm

Mary-Jane wrote:

6) If we decide to breed next year, how much more land would we need to give over to the pigs, particularly if subdivision is necessary to rest the land.

I think three areas. One for the weaners you are fattening and you have weaned from the sow, one for your breeding sow, so you can get her back to the boar/AI, and one to rest.

Hope this helps
James

Mary-Jane

Joined: 13 Jan 2005
Posts: 18397
Location: The Fishing Strumpet is from Ceredigion in West Wales

Posted: Tue Jan 17, 06 11:42 am Post subject:

High Green Farm wrote:

...if you can wait a week or so, I'll be publishing an article on how to make a pig house!

James

Bloody brilliant James - all that advice was terrifically helpful. And I shall look forward hugely to your article on how to build a pig house - when I saw how much new ones from suppliers/manufacturers were I nearly passed out!

Thanks so much

wellington womble

Joined: 08 Nov 2004
Posts: 15051
Location: East Midlands

Posted: Tue Jan 17, 06 6:23 pm Post subject:

I know nothing about pigs (or sheep, or in fact, farming!) so this isn't advice, MJ! but my MIL (who is a new sheep farmer), tells me you can't keep sheep and pigs together on the same farm (at all) becuase pigs need lots of potassium, and excrete it, and the resulting land is then poisonous to the sheep. I've been meaning to ask someone here if thats true - it sounds a bit daft to me. So is it? - I've put it here, as if someone who does know something about farming can clarify, it will hopefully be helpful to MJ!

I really hope its not true - I like the idea of mixed farming.

judith

Joined: 16 Dec 2004
Posts: 22789
Location: Montgomeryshire

Posted: Tue Jan 17, 06 6:40 pm Post subject:

wellington womble wrote:

Dunno anything about the potassium business, but I do know that you wouldn't be able to put sheep on a piece of ground after pigs had been on it - because they totally devastate the area. You would have to plough and reseed it before there was anything for the sheep to eat.
If you were going to have a mix of pigs and sheep, you would have to have separate paddocks for them anyway - so I can't see that there would be a problem with your mixed farming arrangement.

judith

Joined: 16 Dec 2004
Posts: 22789
Location: Montgomeryshire

Posted: Tue Jan 17, 06 6:41 pm Post subject:

Mary-Jane wrote:

High Green Farm wrote:

...if you can wait a week or so, I'll be publishing an article on how to make a pig house!

James

I'm looking forward to that one with much anticipation too.

Lionheart

Joined: 05 Sep 2005
Posts: 427
Location: Cheshire

Posted: Tue Jan 17, 06 7:58 pm Post subject:
It's poultry and sheep that don't mix. Don't keep sheep anywhere near where poultry have been as their droppings contain a high level of copper.....and sheep are copper intolerant. Cris

Mary-Jane

Joined: 13 Jan 2005
Posts: 18397
Location: The Fishing Strumpet is from Ceredigion in West Wales

Posted: Wed Jan 18, 06 9:21 am Post subject:

ReevesRareBreeds wrote:

It's poultry and sheep that don't mix.

Don't keep sheep anywhere near where poultry have been as their droppings contain a high level of copper.....and sheep are copper intolerant.

Cris

Ah. We're soon to be taking delivery of our poultry as well (around half a dozen). They will be next to the sheep at least part of the time (as we rotate the sheep on the land), but will be very much penned into their own large high security chicken run (foxes are rife here - day and night), which is then divided in half and will also be rotated every month. They won't be able to get out and into the sheep area. Will that be okay - or should we have a strip of 'no mans land' (or 'no sheep land') between the chicken area and the sheep area?

Joey

Joined: 03 Nov 2004
Posts: 191

Posted: Wed Jan 18, 06 10:45 am Post subject:

OK lets's get this right.
It is copper not potassium that is a potential problem with sheep.
Normal artificial fertilizer for grassland has stacks of potassium in it so that is not a problem.
Some breeds especially continential breeds like Texels are very sensitive to toxicity while British hillbreeds eg Blackface are much more tolerant. As a precaution sheep compound feed does not have any supplemental copper in it. However in certain areas of the UK where there is low levels of copper in the soil, sheep can then suffer from copper deficiency and there are copper supplements for
sheep, drenches and pastes etc.
Now cattle,poulrty and pig feed all have copper in the normal vitamin and mineral supplementation and all carry warnings"Do not feed to sheep" and in some cases there are warnings not to keep sheep on land where pig manure has been spread. Since January a year ago only pig feed designed for feeding to pigs younger than 12 weeks of age can have high copper levels ie 170 mg/kg .
Pig finisher and breeder feed have copper levels very similar and in many cases lower than feeds for dairy cows ie 20-40mg/kg.
pig feeds. Layers feed tend to be even lower in copper.
Lots of farmers keep cattle and sheep together and I know of intensive pig farmers who keep sheep on land manured from the pigs.
So Don't let sheep eat any feed that is for feeding to other species
but I don't think there is any risk on keeping a few pigs on land where sheep will graze.

Mary-Jane

Joined: 13 Jan 2005
Posts: 18397
Location: The Fishing Strumpet is from Ceredigion in West Wales

Posted: Wed Jan 18, 06 11:13 am Post subject:
Ooh err - I'm getting a mite confused now. So it's perefctly okay for us to keep the chooks next to the sheep, behind the fencing so long as their feed doesn't get chucked over the fence? Our sheep feed is the proper stuff and only fed to the sheep - and our sheep are black-faced Suffolk and Texel crosses.

Joey

Joined: 03 Nov 2004
Posts: 191

Posted: Wed Jan 18, 06 11:25 am Post subject:

By Blackface I mean Scottish Blackface. Suffolk are a lowland breed
and intermediate in copper tolerance. So your Texel crosses would
tend toward being sensitive.
But lets get this into perspective. You have a few chickens and a few pigs and if the sheep will graze these areas as well as the other areas that wont' have had pigs or poultry on them they won't
be constantly exposed to high copper levels. You are not speading manure from 100's of pigs or 1000's of chickens on your few acres.
Your pig and poultry feed purchases will be measured in kilos / year
not 100's of tonnes.
You do not have to worry at all.

Mary-Jane

Joined: 13 Jan 2005
Posts: 18397
Location: The Fishing Strumpet is from Ceredigion in West Wales

Posted: Wed Jan 18, 06 12:15 pm Post subject:

Joey wrote:

But lets get this into perspective. You have a few chickens and a few pigs and if the sheep will graze these areas as well as the other areas that wont' have had pigs or poultry on them they won't
be constantly exposed to high copper levels. You are not speading manure from 100's of pigs or 1000's of chickens on your few acres.
Your pig and poultry feed purchases will be measured in kilos / year
not 100's of tonnes. You do not have to worry at all.

Ah - I see. Right-ho. Thanks very much Joey. Sorry about the panic!

mochyn

Joined: 21 Dec 2004
Posts: 24585
Location: mid-Wales

Posted: Wed Jan 18, 06 2:56 pm Post subject:

My two Tamworth weaners arrived at the end of November and are wonderful! I'm a first timer, and had thought of getting a more docile breed but as I've always wanted Tamworths I jumped in at the deep end and not regretted it. I'm aiming at building up to 6lb per pig per day at 6 months, by which time I'll be deciding which is to stay as my breeding girl and which to become meat. When that happens I'll get anopther 1 or 2 in to keep the breeder company and send the eater away to be dealt with.

They have a quarter acre of woodland and love it, they've turned it into mud and love rampaging around. They have an electric fence and a large ark as it's going to be the farrowing ark when the time comes. The breeder and her chums will go into our top field in the spring where they'll be fenced in electrically again as we have public footpaths all over our land. This is partly to rest the woodland and partly because we need the bracken in the top field digging up! It's about an acre, so they'll have lots of space.

Before I bought them I met the parents: a lovely sow and boar, the boar a show winner. That was definitely a good move: gave me an idea of ultimate size and let me see the condition and conformation of the parents.

They are very active pigs, but they respect the fence. My only (slight) worry is that one day they're going to push me over!

If you're worried, Tony York runs smashing pig-keepikng courses at Pig Paradise in Staffordshire. I can really reccommend them. He also sells pigs, arks and feed!

judith

Joined: 16 Dec 2004
Posts: 22789
Location: Montgomeryshire

Posted: Wed Jan 18, 06 3:06 pm Post subject:

mochyn wrote:

My only (slight) worry is that one day they're going to push me over!

That's how you know when they are ready to go.

Jonnyboy

Joined: 29 Oct 2004
Posts: 23956
Location: under some rain.

Posted: Wed Jan 18, 06 3:10 pm Post subject:
Mochyn, how much did you pay for them? If you don't mind saying that is.

mochyn

Joined: 21 Dec 2004
Posts: 24585
Location: mid-Wales

Posted: Wed Jan 18, 06 3:14 pm Post subject:
My girls were £40 each.

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