Saturday, July 2, 2016

June family book report by Jason

Storey’s Guide to Raising Pigs—by Kelly Klober

Another report full of information, unlikely to be of much interest to those not into or considering raising pigs. For us, it was a timely read!

This book is intended to be an informative primer on how to get started with swine raising for any purpose, and a guide for answering basic questions one might encounter along the way.  If the reader pays good attention, it would seem to me that many mistakes can be prevented, and it would be much more likely that the would-be pig keeper will have a satisfying and productive experience rather than a frustrating or disappointing one.

At this stage of life our family has no need for guidance on how to breed or raise pigs for show purposes, how to maintain a herd of breeding hogs, or how to organize a swine venture of commercial scale.  As such, I either skipped or skimmed some of the sections of the book related to these pursuits, and have included many fewer quotations from these topics.

The information I did find relevant to our family’s and farm’s stage of development I have organized into sections.  It seemed to me that the first applicable topic is around the question of alimentation, or feeding.  Do we have at our disposal, from our land or other available resources, what is needed for hog raising, and for how many?  What nutritional program best fits our farm’s swine production goals, and from what era of history does that program hail?

The second topic is that of facilities.  What physical structures must we provide in order to promote the healthy, comfort, safety, and productivity of hogs here at Tangly Woods?

Thirdly comes the question of swine health.  How can we best understand the factors that contribute to the thriving of hogs, and what interventions might be needed from us to support that thriving at critical times?  How can we avoid unnecessary health compromises or losses without incurring unnecessary expenses or exposing the hogs or us to unnecessary chemical health treatments?
Some aspects of these first three topics are highly subject to variability based on variations in the fourth topic: genetics!  A hog can perform at a worse level, but never a better level, than it genetic potential.  But what good performance means varies tremendously by the system of production chosen, and a hog that might perform admirably in one system might fail to produce much at all in another.

In the last section we tie it all together in the topic of the enterprise of hog production.  I organized this section loosely concentrically.  That is to say we start with the microenterprise of hog raising to provision the family table, then work our way outward through small-scale production until we end with some philosophy on what hog entrepreneurs face by way of challenges and opportunities in today’s rapidly changing pork market.

Each section will consist primarily of quotations from the book, with a sprinkling of commentary by me.

Feeding Strategies
We start with some standard, expected advice:

Page 73 “On range, or when adding to the ration food items with a lesser-known nutrient content, it is best to keep the hogs on a complete dietary ration appropriate for their age and role as sow, finisher, grower, and the like.  Consider your additions as a little something extra and offer them in modest amounts that the animals will clean up quickly.  Hogs are like big kids and can easily render their diets completely unbalanced by choosing items they favor in taste over less-palatable, more healthful options.”

Page 181 “Few sights are prettier than a set of hogs, slick and shiny, on a rich, green pasture.  It is the picture of health and wholesomeness.  Hogs can fare well even on total legume pastures—something few ruminants can do. Hogs are not the most efficient users of pasturage, however.  They are omnivores and have a single gut.  They do not totally utilize the browse—twigs, leaves, and shoots—and they need richer sources of energy.  One-quarter acre (0.1 ha) of pasture will adequately carry up to four sows with their litters, but it has to be considered little more than a dessert option for those sows.”

These quotes show good wisdom for most scenarios, especially for commercial production where meeting market expectations and parameters is every bit as critical to profitability as making use of available resources.  But what if your highest priority is making use of resources and production timetables and predictability are less critical?  And what if the genetics you are working with are more generalistic, less tailored?  These questions were not directly answered, and I wonder if this is information that will be accessible anywhere in written form.  We may need to learn this by experience, won in time or borrowed from friends.  If the answer is available, though, perhaps this quote shows where it might be found:

Page 73 “One of the best feeding investments anyone can make is an older, unabridged copy of Morrison’s Feeds and Feeding.  This great old book contains all of the basics of livestock feeding and feedstuffs’ composition.  And it was put together back in the day when the mixed-stock farmer was king and regionalized farming practices were the norm.”

Clearly hog farmers and hog markets used to be more tuned to a more integrated and hands-on approach:

Page 74 “Meat scraps and skimmed milk were once about the only protein supplements to be fed to hogs, along with open-pollinated corn that was much higher in crude protein than today’s heat-dried hybrids.  Together these three items created simple, nutrient-dense rations for all classes of hogs and pigs weaned at around 8 weeks of age.”

Page 75 “Swine rations concocted between 1900 and 1940 were simpler than most seen now—many hogs were finished on pasture or while gleaning grain fields.  Still, as noted above, rations were filled with nutrient-dense ingredients.  Not only was the tankage supplement 8 to 10 percentage points richer in crude protein than today’s widely used soybean oil meal-based protein supplements, but the corn in use then was also more nutritionally dense. In the good old days, skimmed milk or good legume-pasture and corn varieties like Reid’s Yellow Dent or Bloody Butcher were all that was needed for late-stage finishing or sow maintenance.  Those old, open-pollinated field-corn varieties often tested in the 13 to 16 percent crude-protein range.  This was far better than the 8 or 9 percent levels assigned to modern hybrids, and many hog producers are assigning a value of just 6 percent when formulating rations with heavily heat-dried corn.”

Page 78 “Early in the last century, growing hogs were given X amount of corn each day.  The corn was counted out to provide so many ears of corn per head or so many scoopfuls of corn per pen of hogs.  For many months of each year, the hogs were on legume-rich pastures with a bit of corn fed each day.  Skim milk or tankage might be offered in a trough once or twice each day.”

Page 76 “Many producers still feed some ear corn, sometimes even allowing the hogs to glean it in the field, and others feed a great deal of shelled corn, especially if feeding on the ground or in open troughs to better counter waste. A once-common practice was to keep barrels of shelled corn soaking in water to improve palatability and digestibility when fed.”

These quotes tantalize a reader like me with hints of how hog production might fit into our farm some year in the future, even if for the moment it makes sense to keep things much more simple.

Of course, there are some modern health concerns about the practice of feeding meat products to food animals, and Mr. Klober addresses them in some detail.  The upshot is this:

Page 74 “I support the use of fish, dairy, and eggs being added to rations, although some consumer groups prefer those that are vegan.  It is widely known that in the wild hogs eat a lot of red meat.”

Page 77 “There are alternatives to soybean oil meal and meat scraps, including some dairy-based products, but they tend to be higher in price.  The alternatives contain more complex and easily digestible proteins.  They do create very good, palatable rations, and they are a must in formulating rations for very young pigs.”

Essentially, it would seem that the combination of grain and some source of protein form the customary basis of dietary needs for hogs.  If a person wishes to go against this “grain”, they will not find much help for it in this book.

In addition to diet, there is the question of feeding pattern.  Free choice and Limit feeding are the two styles outlined.  Here is the comment on limit feeding (which is closest to our practice):

Page 80 “Limit Feeding a hog to about 90 percent of appetite, the second approach to feeding out an animal, will produce a slightly trimmer hog and will somewhat reduce daily feed costs.  It will also extend an animal’s time on feed; as a result, you will probably realize no overall savings on feed costs.”

Extending the question of pattern beyond the daily and into the pattern of growth of the animal, we have the following quotes:

Page 80 “As a finishing hog ages and grows, its growth rate and feed efficiency slow, and much of the weight gain in the late stages of the growout period is often finish (fat cover) rather than lean or muscle gain.  A traditional feeding practice to help the producer cope with this natural pattern has been to reduce the crude-protein content of the ration as the hog grows.”

To that quote I ask: But what if you want the fat?  Then how would you want to feed?

But let’s assume you did actually have to buy all their feed in a sack.  How much feed are we talking about?

Page 81 “By the 50-pound (22.7 kg) bagful, feed regularly falls into the 8- to 12-cents-per-pound range; one growing hog will generally consume 650 to 750 pounds (295 to 340 kg) of such feed as it grows from 40 pounds (18.1 kg) to slaughter weight.”

Facilities
There was way too much detail on this topic in the book to relate here.  I will include a few nuggets, from which we may extrapolate that appropriate facilities are not necessarily premium facilities, but that knowing the parameters of what makes for hog health and comfort supports the small farmer’s needs and tendencies to make do and to improvise.

Page 54 “…be sure to insulate the roof.  This will prevent condensation from forming on the inside of the roof and falling on the pigs and their bedding.”

Page 146 “Many hog facilities can be made to do double duty by housing other species (a one-sow farrowing house with a solid floor is also a dandy place to brood baby chicks or waterfowl)…)

Page 181 “One of our drylots was in continuous use for nearly 10 years and still sheltered sows in a safe and healthful environment.  However, many producers prefer to rotate drylots every few years, plowing them up and sowing them to grass or legumes for a time.  Leaving them idle for 12 months will disrupt the life cycles of a great many harmful parasites and disease organisms.

Page 204 “Seasonal farrowing on range is possible 6 to 8 months of the year in most parts of the country and is pursued even in Michigan and Minnesota.  On pasture the houses need to be positioned 100 to 150 feet (30.5 to 45.7 m) apart, to keep sows from doubling up in them and thus increasing pig losses through crushing.”

Page 210 “If outside air temperatures are above 60 degrees F (15.6 degrees C) [when farrowing], you may not need supplemental heat.”

Health Management
A few themes I noticed from the extensive commentary on this topic were: 1) If you start with clean and healthy animals and you are careful not to contaminate them, you are not likely to have much trouble, 2) A well-designed environment is the biggest factor in success, 3) The small-scale operation has a huge health advantage over the large-scale one, 4) Breeding and genetics are key, and 4) Supporting and challenging the animal’s immune system is a more effective strategy than barricading the herd from inoculum.  Still, some interventions in the case of disease, or even just in case of it, are recommended in the book.  A sample of quotes follows:

Page 87 “Unless you have been assured otherwise—and have some sort of documentation—assume that all pigs have at least been exposed to all of the major internal parasites or worms, as well as to external parasites and any localized problem parasites.  They will need to be dewormed…”

Page 241 “Current thinking [on pre-farrowing cleaning] is that a simple cleaning and scraping are generally more than enough.  Placing a couple of forkfuls of spent bedding from the farrowing house into the gestating pens a month ahead of sow due dates and getting the sows into the farrowing quarters a week ahead of their farrowing dates will help each animal develop her own natural immunity to any harmful organisms.  This is also an immunity that she can pass on to her young through the milk for the first few weeks of life.  It is also far easier than trying to sterilize all the porous surfaces and nooks and crannies in a farrowing unit.”

Page 268 “Your best money as a producer will be spent on quality feedstuffs and safeguarding animal comfort.  In the worst of weather, I knew I had done the best by my hogs if I left them well fed and watered and with clean, dry bedding before the coming night.”

Page 268 “In nature, when the population of a given species becomes too great for a certain locale, natural forces intercede to trim the population to more sustainable numbers.  Generally, these take the form of some sort of contagious or infectious agent.  The same is true when domestic animals are packed too tightly into an artificial environment.”

Page 269 “Drugs and steroids have kept a lot of hogs in the gene pool producing when they should have been washed out of the herd long before reaching the breeding pen.”

Page 270 “Practice lot and pasture rotation.  This helps to control parasites and mud, which will keep the animals more comfortable.”

Page 270 “…many swine illnesses can be prevented through management—the type of management that the small producer can provide.”

Page 296 “To avoid [Transmissible Gastroenteritis] in your herd, be careful not to buy or bring in infected animals.  Don’t go to other places where there are hogs, or hog producers, in the same clothing you wear around your hogs.  And be sure to keep birds and dogs away from your herd.”

Genetics
So much clearly depends on the genetic material you start with.  Knowing the history and uses of the various breeds and strains, and ultimately of the pig families we buy from or into, could go a long way towards getting animals to raise that catalyze the kind of success we seek.  I was influenced by the book and other reading I have done towards an opinion that a person should not approach these choices with prejudices for or against any particular breed or category, but should maintain an open mind and understand that with genetics you are working with a paradox of dependable traits nested within and dependent on an ever-changing process.

Page 32 “The Chester White is an American-developed white breed that originated in Chester County, Pennsylvania, with the name Chester County White.  It has a medium-sized frame and drooping ears.  It is probably an underutilized white breed, considering its hardiness, which makes it appropriate for producers working outdoors with simple facilities.”

Page 35 “Heirloom breeds are still to be valued for a number of reasons, including the simple fact that they represent some of the hardiest of all the swine genetics.  As a group they are quite naturally lean, adapt readily to a wide range of environments, and are among the best choices for a pasture- or range-based production system.”

Page 44 “Some preservationist groups, such as the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy, have brought needed focus on these breeds, but where is their long-term thinking about them?  There needs to be a real meeting of the minds as to where these breeds should be genotypically and phenotypically.”

Page 45 “A couple of breeds that are growing in numbers but that do not fit any practical niche are the Vietnamese Potbelly and the Kune Kune pig.  Their greatest appeal for the moment is as “miniature” swine, but they were developed as meat animals for very constrained environments.  They were raised by families who had limited feedstuff for the livestock, who had to eat all meat when it was fresh, and for whom every bit of food counted.  These and other environmental restrictions dictated the breeds’ sizes.”

Page 46-47 “The exotic breed sector has a hard question to answer and one that must be answered soon:  What is the ultimate use of these animals?...If preservation work succeeds, the “rare” or “sellers” market it fosters will go away…What is the long range vision for them?  Where are the guidelines for breeding them for better and more production? What market niches will they fill 5, 10, or 20 years from now?...The modest-sized whole and half carcasses of exotic breeds might make them a good choice for today’s smaller families.  They may produce some exceptionally flavorsome pork or lend themselves to certain cuisines.  What do they taste like?...I don’t like myself when I become skeptical, but until I see a Choctaw or an Ossabaw hog win a market hog show in the Midwest, I am going to continue my pessimistic ways.  Eventually, they will have to play by the same rules as the Hampshires and Durocs and their producers.  To do this they must be moved along in that direction now.  This means selective breeding for litter size, economic traits, and a consistent standard for breed character…Sadly, right now they are valued mostly as hobbies for the wealthy.  These hogs need some showdowns in the show ring, true-type conferences, a pool of data proving their worthiness and the specific roles they can play, and producers that see them as livestock with a future and not just two hundred specimens with a past.”

Page 48 “Smaller-sized pigs such as the Potbelly and Kune Kune are more easily transported, a trait that was especially crucial in locales such as Polynesia, where the supplies and livestock needs for a new settlement had to be carried by canoe and outrigger.  These pigs can live in harsher landscapes, where their food supply is limited and where their size is economically justified.  These miniature swine were and still are hogs in every sense.  Unfortunately, they are being raised in this country primarily as gimmicks to sell to others.”

Page 49 “Most hybrids are stronger than their purebred parents; the result of two distinct bloodlines coming together is a stronger, more durable animal.  But the traits that are expressed are also less predictable because they are two different breeds.  These days hybrid vigor is accomplished almost entirely by seedstock companies that sell crossbred and composite breeding animals…Many of the modern so-called hybrids are quite complex in their structure, and because the strains are so closely managed, they lock producers into joining a contract program using a whole phalanx of company hogs to maintain even a semblance of hybrid vigor.  It is an expensive and complex practice that require much genetic fine tuning and extensive housing and produces some animals that are not as productive as purebreds.  It’s a system that could shut individual producers out of swine seedstock production in the same way that independent poultry producers were blocked from producing now-favored broiler and laying-hen strains.”

Page 267 “Experience has taught me that before anything else you must select for basic vigor and what we have come to call stoutness.  You want them big, strong, full of vinegar and prunes, and ready for whatever life may throw at them. And that begins in the first hours of life in the farrowing pen.”

These thoughts could be useful for making intelligent choices about feeder pigs, and those experiences could in turn affect a choice down the road about acquiring breeding stock.

The Enterprise
This is a big topic to which I cannot hope to do justice here.  There are innumerable ways one might organize the activity of hog raising, each a response to a different set of constraints and pressures coming from all levels and directions, from personal flavor preferences to health understandings, to 
available market opportunities to public health laws.

The basic pattern

Page 11 “Hogs are very efficient users of feedstuffs, often averaging 1 pound (0.5 kg) of gain on just 3 to 3.5 pounds (1.4 to 1.6 kg) of feedstuffs, even in the simplest of facilities.  While this may not be a trait that first-world weight-conscious humans would find becoming in their own physical development, hog producers gratefully accept the fact.”

Page 102-103 “When you’re up to your elbows in the task of working up a carcass, you’ll soon see the truth in the words of the legendary livestock nutritionist Frank B. Morrison in the ninth edition of his classic text, Feeds and Feeding Abridged: ‘Pigs exceed all other farm animals in the efficiency with which they convert feed into edible meat.  They require much less feed and much less total digestible nutrients for each pound of gain in liveweight than do other farm animals.  They also yield a higher percentage of dressed carcass, a larger percentage of the carcass is edible, and pork is higher in energy content than other meat.”

Page 53 “The growout period will normally be between 90 and 120 days, depending on the starting weight of the pig, and in many places fits into the spring or fall season, to avoid the weather extremes of a Missouri summer or a Maine winter.”

Page 30 “Remember, the goal is to achieve optimal performance from a given set of hogs and facilities.  Maximum levels of performance in any type of production agriculture are seldom, if ever, truly cost-effective, as they must be supported by fancy housing and more-costly rations.”

Page 215 “The performance of young boars is enhanced by the presence of male hormones that will be unavailable to barrow or gilt offspring.”        

Page 250 “Castration may be an even more controversial procedure than tail docking.  Still, in this country the meat from even the youngest uncastrated boars is sharply discounted in price.  In Europe a lot of lightweight hogs are used for fresh and processed pork products, many of them intact males of 5 months of age or less.”

Acquiring stock

Page 49-50 “Long ago I was cautioned that if you bring something in from 1,000 miles (1,609 km) away, you may have to haul it back every one of those 1,000 miles to get it sold again.”

Page 65 “The best place to buy feeder pigs is at their farm of origin…Pigs at an auction are often stressed from the transport and handling.  There is also a very real risk that they might have been exposed to disease organisms or sick pigs.”

Page 65 “Early spring may be the most expensive time of the year to buy feeder shoats because fewer sows farrow in the cold months of December, January, and February, when the early feeders are born.  Still, these pigs are desirable because they will reach a good slaughter weight before the weather grows excessively hot and humid.”

Page 212 “I’ve found the best ways to find out about good buys on hogs are (in order of preference) talking with fellow raisers, attending hog events, reading local newspapers, and checking out hog publications.”

Page 213 “It is perhaps best to go with first impressions when selecting breeding animals.”

Home production

Page 65 “As mentioned, hogs are not all ham and chops, but one or two hogs fed out each year will go a long way toward meeting the protein needs of a typical family of four.  If fed out at least two at a time, the hogs will be more content, because they are herd animals.”

Page 53 “…along with quality control, there is much that you as a home finisher can do to contain costs.  Granted, a pig is not all chops, but when it is raised and processed to order, you can expect to maximize the cuts and quality you and your family prefer in meat and meat products.”

Page 171 “The classic sausage seasoning, sage, actually doesn’t freeze very well and can impart a bitter flavor to the meat in frozen storage.”

Meating” the public: the commercial scale

Page 177 “In many countries known globally for the quality of their pork, younger, smaller hogs go to market.  Forty years ago, you could have yourself a 220-pound (99.8 kg) butcher when the animal was just a bit older than 5 months.  They were efficient gainers because they were young and growing muscle, and they moved through finishing facilities and off the farm in short order…I believe the younger, lighter-weight market hog may again have a role for those engaged in the direct marketing of pork and butcher hogs.  They are the porcine equivalent of the Cornish game hen or the “baby chicken” broiler now showing up in pricier restaurants.  And this approach would certainly produce the basic cuts of pork now in keeping with today’s smaller families.”

Page 314 “There are some of us who share a fairly common sentiment that family farmers should be freer to directly process and sell their own production.  They can’t, however, because the needed inspection services are not in place.”

Page 315 “Two quality cured hams will now often bring as much as or more than an entire butcher hog on the hoof—but family farmers are now largely cut off from this market, which was once their traditional domain, through a series of nitpicking rules that do not always prove effective in guarding public health or food quality.”

Page 317 “It is far easier to fund and establish 10 different farm ventures netting $2,000 each yearly than to create just one enterprise with a capacity for $20,000 in net earnings.”

Page 5 “The versatile hog will always be a creature of the small farm and the smallholding; it is a far too valuable and utilitarian creature to think it might serve otherwise.”

Page 10 “Many people believe they must have a large acreage and hogs by the hundreds for pig production to be a viable enterprise.  Nothing could be further from the truth.”

Page 5 “Although hog production had been forced into a corporate mold in recent years, those practices don’t consider the nature of the hog, the laws of the marketplace, the wishes of the consumer, and the calling of the farmer to be a wise and thoughtful steward.”

Page 318 “At this writing, the small-scale pork producer must function as something of a maverick—a “repioneer.”

Page 318 “The only farming sectors still in total favor with the consuming public and whose output garners a willingly given premium from that public are the organic growers and the clearly identified family farmers.”

Page 319 “Animal-rights issues, environmental measures, and consumer concerns can and may all grow to a point where the pressure they will bring to bear on the large operations will be just too great.  Some small farmers are already tapping into this resistance by pursuing niche markets for additive-free pork, pork raised outside, and pork with real pork taste.  The niches of today are the only alternatives for tomorrow.”

Page 321 “Optimum production means seeking a fair and reasonable return on investment rather than attempting to totally maximize production in the faint hope that returns will eventually surpass costs.  In other words, by optimum I mean aiming for a fair and livable return, rather than attempting to extract every cent of return possible by any means available.”

Page 322 “The time and resources needed to wring every dollar possible from a venture are simply not always justifiable on economic grounds or sustainable environmentally.  And let’s be realistic here—life is just too short to spend the whole of it down in the hog lots rooting out every last dollar to be had there.”

Page 340 “By becoming more focused on the care and breeding of the hogs, small producers are finding a way out of the morass of agribusiness and pork as a mere commodity.  After years of drifting away, there are young people and families coming back to raising hogs.  It is happening on a modest scale but with the solid backing of a dedicated consuming population that approves of what we are doing.  Consumers are seeking input now, and rewarding our production with premium prices.
I feel better about this kind of production than I have for some time and see a very bright future for this truly artisanal type and level of production agriculture.  Ultimately, it will be what we, the individual producers, make of it.  We have an opening unique and apart from any seen in my lifetime.”

Page 347 “Dad used to say that if you couldn’t walk the whole of your farm before breakfast, you were farming too big.”

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