pig costs and advice please

[matowakan]

We have the chance of being able to keep a couple of pigs.
Can anyone advise me if it is cost effective to keep 2 and raise them for eating with regard to feed,vets, slaughter etc.
I dont think we can slaughter ourselves? but I think we can butcher after slaughter.
Any advice gratefully received.

[Gert]

Hi

I think that the main problem with keeping pigs as far as cost effectiveness goes, is the feed .
If you are just planning to fatten them for the table, then it's really down to you, you feed them until you are happy with the size of the pig compared to what you have spent on feed.
Vet's fees shouldn't really be an issue as hopefully they won't be around long enough to need attention.

It's a difficult one to answer as you are not planning to sell them on, or breed your own replacements.
So it's really down to how much you are prepared to pay for home reared bacon.
Hope that was vaguely helpful

Basically, the feed is your major expense.

[matowakan]

Thanks for that. I too thought the main expense would be feed as they would be only for the table.
As you say hopefully we will not need the vet1
Regards Fi

[Gert]

Best of luck with it. Let us know how you get on

[Siena]

Hi,

I just got three pigs myself recently. They cost 45 euro each for a 10 wk old, which is a pretty good price from looking around here anyway. They do eat a lot though. Can you put them free ranging? I've had mine in a stable for 5 weeks now and am putting them out at the weekend. They eat about about a bag of feed in five days, between the three of them but I stretch it by adding flaked maize and table scraps. They'll eat pretty much anything. You would save a lot of money by letting them graze outside though as on days I've let mine out they barely touch their food when they come back in.

That's about all I know. Still collecting information myself. Oh and from what everyone is telling me - a sick pig is a dead pig - so the vet probably would be too late anyway. Not trying to turn you off; that's just what everyone has said to me - including our own vet.

Only thing is we're planning on breeding from one of the pigs to keep our supply going and sell what pigs we don't need. Hoping this will make it pay for itself.

Best of luck.

[John Headstrong]

I know nothing of keeping pigs but Stoney does

http://www.selfsufficientish.com/forum/ ... 86#p101186

It costs us £50.10 to produce a 9-10 weeks, birth-notified weaner for sale to someone to finish (and we sell for £50).

They're then advised to feed each pig 1.2kg of "hard" feed a day to 12 weeks, then 1.6kg to 18 weeks and no more than 1.8kg from then to 24-26 weeks (slaughter at porker weight). Assuming the animals are kept on grass and are foraging.

With feed prices at £432 per kg (organic sow rolls), it works out at £68.95 per pig to 24 weeks. (But feed prices are rising.)

Slaughter costs vary from abattoir to abattoir, but ours is £30.97 per pig.

Our butcher charges £10 to butcher a porker.

And then there's the fuel costs for collecting the animal from the buyer, then taking it to slaughter. These vary a lot, but say £15.

Veterinary costs should be neglible with porkers, but I'd allow for one emergency call-out a year to be on the safe side. With us, that starts at £50. (Our costs are actually much higher due to keeping a herd.)

Bedding costs us £2.50 a bale for small bale straw. In wet weather, they can use a bale a week. In dry, a bale a month. Say five bales, but split between two pigs, which is £6.25.

Then there are the capital costs, but if you keep pigs year in, year out these become less expensive the more you do it. This covers housing, fencing, slap boards, tools, etc.

You should also allow for the costs of tagging/slapping, particularly if the person selling the weaners doesn't mark them themselves. A complete slapping set-up will cost around £70-80 (slapper with numbers, inkpad and tattoo ink). Similarly with metal tags (plastic are not accepted as ID for pigs going to slaughter).

So we have:

Price of pig: £50
Price of feed: £68.75
Bedding: £6.25
Slaughter: £30.97
Butcher: £10
Fuel: £15
Vet contingency: £25 (assuming you keep two pigs, and split the cost between them)

Total per pig: £180.97 (ex vet contingency and capital costs)

At 24 weeks, you should get at least 30kg of useable meat from a 60kg liveweight boar. A gilt will take a week or two longer to hit the same weight. The amount of useable meat is less from a traditional breed than from the modern breeds. Novice pig keepers tend to overfeed their animals so there's more fat and less useable meat.

With care and attention it should be possible to get more useable meat and less fat (but not too little) from a pig. Our best was a killing out ratio of 76.9 per cent (commercial farmers aim for 75) from an 80kg liveweight pig. That translated to 61.4kg deadweight and 45kg of useable meat.

Back to our porker at 24 weeks.

Amount of useable meat after butchering: 30kg
Price per kg: £6.03 (but ex labour, capital and veterinary contingency).

Personally, I think £6 per kg is excellent value for pork that will be a lot tastier, juicier and better textured than anything you'll get from the supermarket. Add in the fun of keeping your own pigs, and there's no argument—if you have the space, keep a couple of pigs.

But I'm biased!

(Oh, and please pay your pig breeders a fair price for their animals. We get far too many people trying to pay well below the cost of production for weaners and it's insulting to say the least. Also, if you do tell a pig breeder that you're going to take their animals, actually follow through and take them. We get at least one time-wasting fantasist per litter.)


As for hens, feed prices are rising too fast for eggs to pay reliably. We put our prices up four weeks ago to reflect feed prices, only to have feed go up again on Saturday. We'll have to absorb that increase until at least September.

But, we don't do this for economic reasons anyway. We're preserving rare breeds (Berkshire pigs and Scots Grey hens), we're feeding ourselves top quality food, we enjoy having livestock, we get oodles of muck for our vegetables and fruit, and we can supply friends plus work colleagues of the Other Half with our surpluses.

If you're looking at doing it for economic reasons (ie to make it pay) then all I can say is that few farmers, apart from the very largest, are coming out ahead at the moment_especially in pork, poultry and dairying.

that post is exactly a year old and I know that prices have gone up since then more of Stoney can be found here http://stonehead.wordpress.com/

[geoffrey]

We have the chance of being able to keep a couple of pigs.
Can anyone advise me if it is cost effective to keep 2 and raise them for eating with regard to feed,vets, slaughter etc.
I dont think we can slaughter ourselves? but I think we can butcher after slaughter.
Any advice gratefully received.

You'll only spend more on feeds, if you will only keep the pigs for eating, i think raising them would not be that expensive. And yes, it's hard for you to slaughter them someday, it would be better to ask someone to do it for you.

[Ellendra]

Came across an article on growing animal feed in the garden, things like winter squash and extra root veggies, although for summer pigs I bet leafy things like collard greens would work. Might help lower that feed bill?

[oldjerry]

You must have a holding number and a herd number or your'e going to have to be seriously duplicitous.If you still want to do it given all the above,which tallys with our experience(although we do substitute some other products with proprietry feed,which lowers the production costs) and your'e up for duplicity,then just ask. OJ

[achillies000]

Thanks for that. I too thought the main expense would be feed as they would be only for the table.
As you say hopefully we will not need the vet1
Regards Fi

[Stonehead]

We have the chance of being able to keep a couple of pigs.
Can anyone advise me if it is cost effective to keep 2 and raise them for eating with regard to feed,vets, slaughter etc.
I dont think we can slaughter ourselves? but I think we can butcher after slaughter.
Any advice gratefully received.

It depends what you're comparing your pork with.

If you're aiming to produce pork below the price of supermarket budget pork then, no, it's not usually cost effective unless you have a reliable source of low-cost feed and are prepared to slaughter, de-bristle/skin and butcher the pig yourself. There's been a big increase in the number of people looking for a way of getting their meat dirt cheap thanks to rising food prices but, to be frank, intensively reared, indoor pigs reared in countries with less regulation and lower costs continue to be the cheapest source of pork.

If you're aiming to produce pork around the price of supermarket mid-range pork (eg British pork but from intensive units), then keeping a pair of pigs yourself can be competitive in terms of price even if you're buying in food and have the pigs slaughtered at an abattoir. It will very much depend on what you have available locally. You'd almost certainly use the lower cost commercial feeds (no organic feed, possibly no GM-free feed) and you'd have to have a cheaper abattoir fairly close by (or slaughter it yourself). You'd almost certainly have to butcher the carcass yourself.

If you're aiming to produce pork around the price of the supermarket premium range lines (eg British free-range or organic pork), then your pair of pigs can be quite competitive. Again, it depends on local factors but you might find you can buy in organic feeds and use a butcher, or buy in organic feeds and butcher yourself, or use GM-free feeds and a butcher, or GM feeds and a butcher doing more involved work. Or you might opt for an organic certified abattoir as they tend to have higher welfare standards but this comes at a cost.

When I take out labour costs and margins, our cost of taking a single pig from 10 weeks through to slaughter and butchering at 28 weeks works out at:

Cost of birth-notified Berkshire weaner @ 10 weeks: £60.50
Cost of feed from 10-28 weeks, 200kg used: £55.60
Cost of small bale straw from 10-28 weeks, nine used: £36.00
Contribution to other costs (housing, fencing, troughs, tools, electricity, vet, etc): £25
Transport to slaughter: £35
Slaughter, meat inspection charge & statutory levy, butchering & packaging, delivery of pork, including VAT: £83.70
Total: £295.80

We get 45kg of pork from that pig, so it works out at £6.57 per kilogram. Bear in mind that that is an average price so while it might appear cheaper than premium free-range cuts from a butcher/supermarket, it's not. More expensive cuts would add £2-4 per kilogram, less expensive cuts and sausage meat would lose £1-3 per kilogram. (Sausages end up costing more because of the extra ingredients, processing equipment and time.)

The cost can be lowered by using cheap, random cross-breed weaners from hobby breeders, as they have lower overheads than those of us who do it on a commercial basis or have to cover all our costs. However, the results are less reliable from random cross breeds and there are more risks involved. Commercial hybrids are crosses, but there's a lot of scientific selection and feeding going into them. Reputable hobby breeders of pedigree pigs, ie with birth-notified stock for fattening, may have lower costs or they may not. Pedigree stock cost more, but the breeder might not factor in labour for example. Birth-notified stock are for meat, pedigree stock for breeding. By buying birth-notifed stock you keep the traditional breeds going, protect genetic diversity and help the more dedicated breeders keep going, whether hobby, semi-commercial or commercial.

With our Berkshires, we know that more than 95% of the time, 200kg of food will result in 45kg of pork with 16mm of backfat after 28 weeks. Our weaners are wormed before they leave us and we only sell big, solid weaners weighing 25-30kg at 10 weeks. That's why they cost more than a random crossbreed sold at 4-6 weeks.

To give an example, we had a customer who bought two 10-week-old weaners from us after much moaning about the price. Some months later, he came back to buy another pair. He tried to negotiate the price down to £30 on the basis that he'd bought a pair of weaners from a "breeder" for that price. However, he admitted the cheap weaners had been "Tamworth crossed with something else", two weeks younger, dramatically underweight for their age and, it turned out, infested with worms because the breeder didn't believe in using "nasty chemicals". When it came to slaughter at 30 weeks the cheap pigs were only 60-65kg liveweight when the Berkshires he'd bought from us had been 100kg at 30 weeks. (A bit too big and fat by our standards, but it's what he thought he wanted.) Needless to say, we didn't drop our price. And he did still buy from us again, after much moaning.

Anyway, another way of lowering the costs can be found by using an abattoir that's closer than ours—if you have one that will take private slaughter pigs. We have an abattoir quite close by but it no longer does private slaughter so we have a 120-mile round trip to the next nearest one.

Butchering costs are very variable. We had two local butchers that we used: one would do a pair of pigs for £20 or a crate of home-brewed stout, the other would do three pigs for £45. The first retired, the other died. Butchering now costs £40 a pig. We have to use a butcher as we sell the pork, but if the pork is for your own consumption then butchering yourself will cut the cost further.

Despite what numerous people say, don't be tempted to skip putting something aside for veterinary costs. If nothing goes wrong, then you are quids in. If something does go wrong and you haven't put aside some money, you're stuffed and your budget goes out the window. And in the worst case, you lose the pigs. At very least, you need to be certain the pigs are free of worms or you'll find the innards, sometimes the entire carcass, will be condemned at slaughter. Reputable breeders will worm the weaners but not everyone is reputable. Most wormers are effective for six months so a 6-12 week-old weaner should be clear of worms up to 30-36 weeks. But if you notice the pigs aren't thriving, even on good rations, have a cough or start passing worms, then you'll have to worm them.

Another example. One of our customers bought two weaners and fattened them successully to 23-24 weeks. He then went away, leaving his wife and children to look after the pigs. One of them went off its feed and "got a bit hot". The family didn't want to spend the money and wanted to wait until Dad came home, so they just hoped the pig "would get over it". Dad came home, ummed and aahed about getting a vet out because of the cost, waited another day and went out only to find a dead pig. An autopsy—expensive—revealed the pig had had a bacterial infection that could have been successfully treated with a shot of Pen & Strep. Oh, and they blamed us for selling them a dodgy pig!

So do make provision for veterinary costs. Most of the time, the pigs will be fine. Sometimes they won't. And please, don't make the increasingly common mistake of not treating animals with antibiotics, wormers etc because of the trendy view that veterinary medicines are "evil" and "nasty". If an animal is sick, have it treated promptly and properly.

Other areas where you can save are on housing, fencing and troughs. Don't skimp or cut corners, but don't spend big either when you're just keeping a pair of pigs. Troughs can be made from the bottoms of clean, plastic 205-litre drums—especially the ones with lipped bottom edges. When they're sunk into the ground the lip stops the pigs lifting them. Housing can be straw bales topped with corrugated iron, although straw is increasingly expensive. Old buildings can be used, too, but bear in mind that pigs are hard on structures. Our sows, for example, like nibbling the lime mortar out of stone walls! Pigs also like to rub so make sure there are no nails or screws sticking out, and no sharp edges. On the fencing side, borrow a battery energiser or buy a second-hand one but make sure the battery is good. Second-hand plastic stakes are cheap and after that you just need 2-3 strands of polywire.

As for cutting corners oo feed, don't. Again, people are always looking for the cheapest possible feed but unless you know exactly what you're doing it's a false economy. Pigs need the appropriate balanced diet to be healthy and reliably produce a a decent carcass. We produce a lot of our feed but it's always as a supplement to formulated rations and not a replacement for them.

Finally, don't cut corners on the paperwork and don't buy pigs from someone whose pigs don't have paperwork. The paperwork is there for the protection of all of us, pigs and humans alike. If there are disease outbreaks the source/s need to be located quickly. If animals have been maltreated, the culprits need to be found. It's not difficult to get a holding number and herd number. The person selling the weaners should fill the movement forms in and give you one copy, keep one copy and send one to the council. You then fill the paperwork in come slaughter time and do the same, one for the abattoir, one for you and one for the council. You'll also have the food chain information paperwork to fill in. It's not difficult.

I have to leave it there as I have a sickly sow to check.

[red]

as Stonehead says, you have to compare like for like...

we raise pigs from weaner to slaughter and it is cheaper than other sources of outdoor reared traditional breed pork.

but it is close. We save a lot by butchering it ourselves. We have had Berkshires in the past, and buy from a reputable award winning local producer. The weaners dont have to be birth notified.. or perfect examples - one of last years did not have the right number of white socks...(breeder pointed it out) but as they are for the freezer.. we dont mind

you should factor in the cost of a freezer if you dont have lots already as a couple of pigs make a lot of pork

and traditional outdoor reared happy pig pork tastes great.

[Stonehead]

I didn't say weaners had to be perfect or birth-notified. However, a well-bred weaner from proven lines that produce consistent carcasses on a given amount of feed is more likely to produce the pork you want than a cross-bred weaner that's the result of random breeding. Similarly, weaners from reputable breeders with a history of good animal welfare practices are more likely to be healthy and happy than those from irresponsible, haphazard breeders who wouldn't know good welfare if it jumped up and bit them on the bum. Both of those things add to the cost, and you get what you pay for.

Anyway, the reason I popped back in was because I've been contacted by someone who wants me to take a sow off their hands. They had a litter of eight piglets, six surviving, from it last year only to discover they had too many pigs, too much pork, no boar, too much work and too much hassle. Their expectation was that I would take their sow on now that they've had enough. I pointed out that we're not an animal sanctuary and the pig was their responsibility, not mine. And no, they hadn't got the sow from us.

So, don't buy pigs without thinking it through first. Don't buy weaners and later decide, "oh, they're too lovely to kill I wonder if someone will take them off my hands?" Don't buy weaners for pork and then decide "oh, it would be fun/cheap to have piglets" only to change your mind later. And don't buy pigs for breeding then expect other people to take them off you hands when you've had enough.