matowakan wrote: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.
