Glenda Pereira: 00:26

Welcome to the Maine Farmcast. This is your host, Dr. Glenda Pereira, the dairy

Colt Knight: 00:32

Co-host…

Glenda Pereira: 00:33

Well, I was gonna introduce you, Colt.

Colt Knight: 00:35

You you totally disregarded my co-host duties. And since you see fit, call me out on it. I am going to reciprocate.

Glenda Pereira: 00:46

To be fair, you are my guest speaker today. So

Colt Knight: 00:54

Does it count if it was my idea?

Glenda Pereira: 00:58

Well, I don’t know. Like, no, I guess. Because technically today, I get to ask you the questions, but sure. So, Colt is our featured speaker today, because in his role as the livestock specialist, he he covers multi species, ruminants and non ruminants. And our topic today is a topic that Colt’s an expert in, which is talking about, how to raise pigs or what’s the best management practices for starting out with pigs.

Glenda Pereira: 01:31

So Colt is my featured speaker, but he is also our cohost. See, that’s what I was gonna do. I was gonna introduce you that way.

Colt Knight: 01:41

Okay. I believe you.

Glenda Pereira: 01:45

And the last time we recorded this, we were talking about a fake spring. Today, we’re recording exactly. That’s what I was gonna say. So we recorded last time in a fake spring day. And today it snowed two inches at my I got

Colt Knight: 02:00

five at

Glenda Pereira: 02:01

my Yeah. So snow snowed quite a bit overnight. So we’re back to winter. My husband says that we will have one day of summer this summer, and then it’ll be back to winter again. And I said, I really, you know, I don’t think so.

Glenda Pereira: 02:20

But I don’t feel very optimistic.

Colt Knight: 02:23

As long as we don’t have another straight mud year like 2023, that was that was awful.

Glenda Pereira: 02:29

Yeah. That was really bad. That really hindered a lot of, farm production because the forage and crop yields were just awful. So, yeah, let’s be optimistic, I guess.

Colt Knight: 02:43

And talk about something happy like pigs.

Glenda Pereira: 02:45

Yeah.

Colt Knight: 02:47

This time of year is always a lot of pig questions coming my way. I am a seed stock producer. And so I get a million emails from folks wanting to source feeder pigs from me this time of year. A lot of folks are new to pig raising. Some folks are trying to get better at it.

Colt Knight: 03:06

You know, they’ve done it a couple times and they’ve seen some of the pitfalls and whatnot. And so I always get a million questions, you know, around raising pigs this time of year. It’s a very timely topic, so I thought we should release it about now when everyone is sourcing their pigs what to look for, what to look out for, what do they need to know before they get into it kind of thing. So as Glenda likes to say, let’s kick this pig and talk about pigs.

Glenda Pereira: 03:38

Yeah. So, when we were discussing kind of the topics we want to go over today or I want you to, mention to our listeners, one of the things that you mentioned was housing, which I think is where we should start because, like you mentioned in the poultry episode, you need to set up before you source the animals. Right? It’s not you set up the fence after. It’s you set up the fence before, so that when you get your animals, it’s already ready to go because they’re already under stressful situation.

Glenda Pereira: 04:12

So you want them to come into a place where they’re they’re gonna be able to be housed properly, have feed, and access to water. So walk us through Well, pigs, considerations for that.

Colt Knight: 04:23

Pigs, like all livestock, need a clean, dry, and well ventilated place to live. And that could be a simple structure or a more elaborate structure, so on and so forth. But the one thing that we really have to contend with here in Maine is the cold weather and the mud when it comes to pigs. So most of our lives or most of our swine production across The United States occurs on concrete. And, you know, most of that happens in really large barns.

Colt Knight: 04:54

Those pigs are actually on top of pits that collect all the the manure and waste and whatnot. Some people will raise their pigs just on a concrete pad so it’s easy to clean. That way when it gets muddy, they can just scrape it off. I will caution you here in Maine where it gets so cold, those concrete pads are just gonna suck the heat right out of those pigs. I’ve I’ve seen a lot of issues raising pigs on concrete in Maine, and and concrete in of itself is a porous substance, so it will absorb and harbor a lot of disease that is really difficult to clean.

Colt Knight: 05:34

Those large scale facilities that have concrete, they actually epoxy over that concrete to close those pores off so it’s easier to sanitize between pigs. So concrete can be a biosecurity risk if it’s not properly maintained. But just that heat sink issue, just draining those energy reserves out of those pigs. And so when you start raising pigs in colder weather, you feed them more so that they stay warm. And then that concrete just suck in that heat right out of the pigs.

Colt Knight: 06:07

They’re expending even more. So what you end up with is pigs that don’t gain weight, pigs that lose weight, pigs that start getting sick more frequently. And, and it can be a difficult situation. But once we have that that clean, dry, well ventilated area, we need to have some good bedding in there. When it comes to pigs, we generally like to use like kiln dried sawdust or straw or something like that.

Colt Knight: 06:35

You don’t want to use green sawdust. Try to avoid that as much as possible. It adds a lot of moisture into their environment, which can, you know, then again, harbor disease, increase humidity, which will either increase the heat index or or lower their body temperature in the colder weathers. But something else with green sawdust is that can harbor mites. And so you can introduce some external parasites with with those green chunks.

Colt Knight: 07:08

Yep. So we wanna avoid that at all costs. And then the pigs are gonna you’ll want to have some outside access for those pigs. And because of our lovely mud seasons, those can get get quite nasty because pigs are naturally rooting animals, so they’re gonna dig up their environment. And so when we turn them loose on a nice little grassy patch, in short order, they’re gonna have that grass all torn up and tilled up.

Colt Knight: 07:35

And then when it rains, the moisture is gonna collect in there. And before you know it, it becomes a mud pit.

Glenda Pereira: 07:40

Yep. And Which is nice for the summer when it’s hot.

Colt Knight: 07:44

Well, even then and and that’s a good question you should bring up is temperature regulation in pigs, because pigs don’t sweat. And the term sweating like a pig actually comes from, smelting iron, pig iron. When they pulled out of the furnace and they would cool, it would sweat. And that’s where the term sweating like a pig comes from. Our actual pigs don’t really sweat, though.

Colt Knight: 08:12

So they will wallow in water and mud to stay cool. But realistically, they would prefer not to get muddy. If you give your pigs a choice between a clean environment and a muddy environment, they will choose the clean environment. Now, just because they need to wallow in that mud hole, if that’s the only relief they get, they will. So if you’re raising your pigs out on pasture, they will create their own mud wallows to stay cool.

Colt Knight: 08:44

And something that that I learned from Penn State University when I visited there a couple years back is they actually create dedicated wallows. They will put a shade structure up where they want that wallow to be and dig a little wallow. And because it’s shaded and there’s a a nice little mud hole there for them to get in, they won’t create new ones. They just go to that one, and it helps protect your pastures. Yep.

Colt Knight: 09:09

I have seen, you know, pigs will destroy an acre or two. Just a handful of pigs can destroy an acre or two within a couple months. So and then it pretty much has to set for another year before it can be utilized But that’s something that you really should consider is what is going to be your relief for raising those pigs through the mud. If we we get the pigs now and we put them straight on the ground as it’s thawing, it’s going to just totally turn into a mud pit, disturb that soil, it’s going to get soft, it’s going to stay muddy all year round. Yep.

Colt Knight: 09:43

So we want to prevent that as much as possible. And then the other thing we got to think about is where we’re gonna feed and water our pigs. And if we keep the feed and water inside the barn, those pigs are gonna defecate and urinate while they’re eating. And so they’re gonna defecate and urinate inside the barn. I much prefer to feed the pigs and water the pigs outside so that they will go outside and use the bathroom.

Glenda Pereira: 10:10

Yep. Yeah. That’s a really good consideration. And there are alternative ways to house your pigs. So, folks that don’t know, you do, you you document some of the alternative ways to raise your pigs.

Glenda Pereira: 10:25

So, you can certainly reach out to us to find out more about your videos, Colt, that you’ve created that are really informative. So there’s not only one way to house pigs. They’re alternative.

Colt Knight: 10:39

Can get really creative with pig housing.

Glenda Pereira: 10:41

Yep.

Colt Knight: 10:42

You know, pigs are a destructive force. So you have to keep that in mind when you’re you’re building your structures. But, you know, I’ve used high tunnels to house pigs. I’ve repurposed barns to house pigs. I’ve made little structures just from cattle panels and tarps.

Colt Knight: 10:59

Yeah. And, you know, they they work pretty good.

Glenda Pereira: 11:01

Yeah. And then for folks who are considering using outdoor pastures, just make sure you rotate like, Colt mentioned, you know, it’s gonna become destructive. So make sure you do it or or plan your season in a way, that you’ll have rest, but it won’t be, you know, just destroying it. And maybe you have an area already that needs some rejuvenation.

Colt Knight: 11:25

And that’s the pig’s destructive force is kind of an old school method of clearing the ground, so to speak. If you you put pigs in an area maybe has a lot of shrubby material, little trees that that you would like to clear out, you can fence that off, put those pigs in there and let them totally destroy that area. And then then you can go in and reseed it and let it grow up the next year without pigs on it to establish the new new grasses and forages. And then the year after that, you’ve got a pretty good pasture. Yep.

Colt Knight: 11:59

Pretty good pasture. And if you’re gonna have pigs year to year, like you said, if we I like to leave those paddocks rest for at least a year. Yep. So we skip a year on putting pigs back in the same place. And that seems to to have the best rejuvenation and the best healing factor for those pastures when it comes to pigs.

Glenda Pereira: 12:21

Yep. And something that we, won’t go into detail today is water. So water is crucial as well if you’re doing, if you’re housing any type of animal. We do have a watering episode. So I think it’s titled watering systems, for livestock.

Glenda Pereira: 12:38

Folks

Colt Knight: 12:38

can think two crucial things to understand when you have pigs is there’s really two ways to water pigs. One, you just give them either like a trough or a tub. Yep. Just an open water system. They are going to climb into that.

Colt Knight: 12:51

They’re gonna make a mess, with that. Or you can use nipple waterers on some kind of either a high pressure water line or just in a bulk storage container. If you do use a nipple waterer, it’s really important that you check the nipple is functioning on a day to day basis. So every day, walk out there and flip that nipple and make sure that the water’s coming out. Because they do get clogged, especially in a in a low pressure situation.

Colt Knight: 13:21

Stuff builds up in there. And it’s really important to so just like checking your water every day, check that nipple because just because there’s water in the tank doesn’t mean that the pigs have access to it if you’ve got those situations.

Glenda Pereira: 13:34

Yeah. But folks can can, circle back to that watering system episode. So we covered housing. Next is feed. So

Colt Knight: 13:44

What you feed your pig

Glenda Pereira: 13:46

Is important.

Colt Knight: 13:47

Is really important. And I think there’s something even that we have to consider when we’re considering what feed to feed our pig is, one, what type of pig do we have?

Glenda Pereira: 14:00

Right.

Colt Knight: 14:00

So if we’ve got a commercial type pig, and most commercial type pigs are crosses between Yorkshire and Landrace with some Durock pig in there. The the Landrace is a really long, lean pig that has large litter sizes. That extra length, actually, they have extra ribs to support their their extra length, which we get more bacon from that we get more piglets from that. The Yorkshire is going to add more muscle to that pig. Plus, they also have large litter sizes.

Colt Knight: 14:34

But back in the the seventies and eighties, when nutritionists said that fat was bad for us and red meat was bad for us, the swine industry responded by breeding all the fat out of those pigs. And then, you know, those of us that are old enough to remember those pork, the other white meat commercials, it’s because they they bred those pigs so lean. There was no fat left in them. And when we did that, how we bred all the flavor out of the pigs. We also made cooking it really difficult.

Colt Knight: 15:07

You know? I can remember as a kid, you didn’t eat a pork chop unless it was slathered in gravy or something because you had to overcook it, for a couple reasons. One of them was a a feeding reason, called relates to trichinosis, which are like little worm parasites that humans can get from eating undercooked pork that was fed garbage. And when I say garbage feeding, that’s the the legal definition for slop feeding of pigs, and that’s what spread those. And so the USDA recommended that we cooked pork to, like, one sixty five, which is overcooking the pork and and cooking all the moisture out and making it tough.

Colt Knight: 15:49

Then there was no fat in those pork chops. So it was really tough and harder to eat. And so some folks might not have had a good eating experiences with that pork. Nowadays, we breed that Durock into those crosses, those those conventional crosses, to put that muscle quality and fat back into those pigs

Glenda Pereira: 16:11

Yep.

Colt Knight: 16:12

So that we get marbling, which is the intermuscular fat, so that we have higher quality pork chops. And since the industry has quit garbage feeding pigs, we no longer have trichinosis issues in our commercial swine herds. And USDA lowered that cooking requirement down to 145. So you can you can get really good pork chops nowadays. Yeah.

Colt Knight: 16:34

Whereas maybe, you know, twenty years ago, was way more difficult.

Glenda Pereira: 16:38

Right. Yeah. And today, we just have, so much more knowledge about understanding nutrient requirements for all of our livestock species. So that certainly helps us to understand what, you know, feeds are important even during the stage of life. So you talked about what kind of pigs do you have, not only breeds.

Colt Knight: 16:57

Well, yeah, that’s what I was getting to. So we’ve got the conventional type pigs, or most people would just call them white pigs in short. And then we have our more heritage breed pigs. Heritage breeds are generally older world genetics. But back then, we raised pigs for lard production.

Colt Knight: 17:17

That was the main goal of those pigs was to produce as much fat so that we’d have energy so we could do all that physical labor so that we could use it in cooking, use it to make soap. I mean, lard was a key part of our diet and lifestyle a hundred years ago, not so much anymore. And so those heritage breeds really don’t keep up with modern breeds when it comes to production. Yep. The modern pigs in a backyard situation are gonna get 300 pounds in six months if they’re fed a free choice diet of good, roughly 16% protein hog grow feed.

Glenda Pereira: 18:00

Yep.Colt Knight: 18:01

Now, our heritage breeds, if we were to give them a free choice diet where they could eat as much as they want, they would just swell up like a tick, and they would be all fat. And so we end up limit feeding heritage pigs so that they grow muscle and fat kind of at the same rate. But because of that, they’re also going to grow a lot slower. You know that the commercial pigs, which are going to get the weight in six months, some of those heritage breeds may never get that big. Some may, but it might take them anywhere between a year and eighteen months to get that same size.

Colt Knight: 18:41

Be really cognizant of which breeds you’re selecting. So if, let’s say if you’re wanting to buy a piglet in the spring and then slaughter it in the fall, so you don’t have to carry it through that following winter, you may not want to choose a lot of these heritage type breed pigs because they’re not going to be ready until the spring or summer of the following year. So, and then because it’s so cold in the winter, and our pigs don’t live in a climate controlled environment, they’re going to eat a lot more in the winter, and you’re going to end up spending a ton of money on feed, just carrying them through the winter. The other important aspect of that is if you’re planning on buying in the spring and then having them butchered in the fall, the fall is the busiest time of year

Glenda Pereira: 19:29

for processing.

Colt Knight: 19:31

And a lot of those processing spots in the fall and early winter are booked up for a year or two in advance. So you should call your meat processor and book an appointment to have that pig processed before you buy the pig. Yep. If not, you’re gonna have to get on like a waiting list and just hope somebody cancels or something happens to get lucky enough to get in. If not, you’ll probably be waiting until the January, beginning of February before those spaces start to open up again.

Colt Knight: 20:00

So again, you’ll be feeding those pigs for an additional several months, which can add up really quickly.

Glenda Pereira: 20:07

Yeah.

Colt Knight: 20:08

You know, most of our commercial pigs and when I say commercial pigs, I’m going to include Berkshire and Durock. They are heritage breeds, but they have more commercial, production like characteristics. They’re gonna eat in a backyard situation between 800 and a thousand pounds of feed to get to full size. Yep. Two seventy five to three twenty.

Colt Knight: 20:33

Somewhere around in there weight wise.

Glenda Pereira: 20:35

Yeah. Yeah. So no. Like you mentioned, after housing and sort of thinking about nutrition, you then, even before you get the pigs on-site, call somebody local in your area that’s gonna process those pigs because, you need to consider whether you’re gonna have enough feed and space, and manure storage too. That’s something to consider in the winter, you know, manure handling.

Glenda Pereira: 21:01

If you’re not gonna keep if you are gonna keep those pigs during the winter, you can’t just, you know, go spread it out somewhere. It’s gonna have to be stored. So that’s another thing to consider, if you don’t get on that list for the fall. So I want to just touch I

Colt Knight: 21:18

think you asked what should we feed the pigs?

Glenda Pereira: 21:20

Yeah. So

Colt Knight: 21:20

I was wanting to I get asked a lot. Yeah. And your best bet is to feed them a commercial pig feed. They’re going to grow the best on that, backyard situation. They’re going to convert that feed at a rate of three or four pounds of feed to one, which means every three pounds of feed we feed them, they gain one pound of pig, so to speak.

Colt Knight: 21:42

So, but folks are always asking me, well, can I feed it my table scraps? Can I feed it, you know, the local elementary school, the waste from the cafeteria, buffets, vegetable trash, old bread, so on and so forth? That way I can save money on feed cost. And the the answer to that is it’s not gonna save you money on feed cost because they do not contain the amino acids, proteins, energy that those pigs need to grow at a sufficient rate. Not to say that they won’t eat it, but, you know, when we talk about a lot of our vegetable trash that is high in fiber, growing pigs do not process fiber very well.

Colt Knight: 22:28

They can process fiber a little bit as they get older, but they have not developed the microorganisms in their digestive tract to digest it as a growing pig. And so it’s mostly just water and fiber. And the pigs don’t get much nutrition from that. Bread, there’s almost no nutrition in just regular bread. It’s a little bit of carbohydrates, but there’s nothing nothing in there that will let the pig grow.

Colt Knight: 22:56

So bread is okay as a treat, but it’s not really a good now, if you have cupcakes, cakes from some of the bakeries, they’ve got a lot of sugar. That does give a lot of energy to the pig, but there’s not a lot of proteins in that sometimes. So you’d still have to supplement protein in on top of that.

Glenda Pereira: 23:14

Yeah. And I think I guess the way I look at it is, unless you’re doing it to scale where you’re actually, you know, calculating out your diet, formulations for these pigs with that byproduct or whatever it is that you’re feeding, those are just, you know, you feed the regular diet and then you feed it some

Colt Knight: 23:38

mean, honestly, at a small

Glenda Pereira: 23:39

scale something to that extent. Yeah.

Colt Knight: 23:41

You really can’t mix

Glenda Pereira: 23:42

your own diet.

Colt Knight: 23:43

You really need that economy of scale. But when it comes to feeding other things that might contain meat or have come into contact with meat, that’s where we start getting into some legal issues actually. 1980 Swine Act was passed through Commerich, which outlawed the feeding of garbage. And when I say garbage, that’s anything that table scraps or anything that might have come into contact with meat. Right.

Colt Knight: 24:13

Or meat itself, unless you have a license to feed that. And to get that license, you have to actually have a system to boil that stuff for at least thirty minutes.

Glenda Pereira: 24:23

Yep.

Colt Knight: 24:25

Honestly, that’s almost all situations that’s uneconomical. It costs more energy to boil the feed than what the feed savings would be worth. So there’s not very many legal garbage feeders out there. And so if you intend to sell the pig or sell the meat from your pig, it is illegal to garbage feed the pig. Now, if it’s just for you yourself, it’s perfectly legal, but it’s not

Glenda Pereira: 24:52

ideal. Recommended.

Colt Knight: 24:53

Yeah. Not ideal. Plus, we’ve got that trichinosis issue where we can spread, you know, worms to people. If you watch medical shows, it always shows up at some point, right? The trichinosis where they do the CT scan and people’s muscles are all covered in little wormies and stuff.

Glenda Pereira: 25:09

Right. So feed those things with with obviously, you know, just think about what it is. But but feed it as more of a treat, not as the main diet. So you’re gonna rely on your grain. And like Cole mentioned, if you’re growing anything, it’s gonna need protein.

Glenda Pereira: 25:26

So anything that’s growing, if you get a feeder pig that’s weaned, recently weaned, it’s gonna need protein to grow and finish. And it’s gonna need energy on top of on top of that.

Colt Knight: 25:39

And something unique to pigs as opposed to like cattle or sheep is they have specific amino acid requirements. Right. Whereas cattle have a really highly evolved digestive tract that can even synthesize some amino acids. We have to supplement them to pigs. And most pig feeds get that from soybeans.

Colt Knight: 25:59

It’s one of the reason organic diets are so expensive is because, most soybeans are GMO and they’re not included in organic diets. And it’s really hard to find a substitute for all those amino acids that those monogastrics need Yep. Not using soybean meals. Yep. They can be quite expensive to find those.

Colt Knight: 26:19

Yeah. The other thing that that I get asked about is like milk waste because we’ve got a lot of dairies around. Feeding milk is legal and milk is a superfood. So it’s got all that stuff that the pigs need, so they will grow grow well on it. The manure is gonna smell awful.

Colt Knight: 26:37

The fat is gonna be really hard on those pigs. As opposed to feeding garbage, the fat consistency ends up being like snot. It’s really gross. If you ever saw a garbage fed carcass next to a grain fed carcass, you would not eat a garbage fed pig at all. And then when you get those milk fed pigs, the butcher will tell you it’s, it’s, it’s like cutting through bone sometimes to get through those big fat reserves on those, those milk fed pigs.

Colt Knight: 27:05

Yeah. Usually when you see YouTube videos of people raising 100% pastured pigs with no grain, there will also be a big trough in the middle of that field where they’re feeding them milk.

Glenda Pereira: 27:16

Yep. Yeah. So, there’s obviously alternative ways to feed pigs. But if you’re starting out, certainly rely on a balanced diet, which, like Colt mentioned, there’s, you know, at your regular feed store, you you can find a balanced diet for your pigs. And then everything else is kind of, you know, a cherry on top, whether it’s whey, which tends to be what some farms usually, are getting rid of if they’re they’re making, you know, cheese or other products, on farm, or treats.

Glenda Pereira: 27:52

And if you’re keeping the pig, for consumption yourself, you know, potentially consider feeding them your, potentially, you know I

Colt Knight: 28:03

would avoid that

Glenda Pereira: 28:03

just for health Or even like heat treat it if if you can. But, just make sure that most of their diet is coming from a balanced, feed that already includes all of, the the nutrient and vitamin requirements that those animals require.

Colt Knight: 28:22

And speaking of health, something that often gets overlooked in pig production are vaccinations. Vaccinations are really important when it comes to pigs, especially if you have the breeding herd of pigs. You definitely need to keep those things vaccinated. What tends to happen is people will start off with a handful of pigs and they don’t have any issues, and so they don’t think that they need to vaccinate their pigs. And then all of a sudden, all of their pigs get the exact same disease and they all either die at the exact same time or they all suffer reproductive failure and they they can’t get pregnant anymore.

Colt Knight: 29:03

And then it’s a devastating loss when your whole herd is wiped out all at once. And and I deal with this actually quite a bit, especially here in Maine. I just got an email this week. Gentleman lost all of his piglets. And from the discussion that we had, it was a vaccine preventable disease, most likely that caused that.

Colt Knight: 29:27

We had an outbreak last year with some disease issues with pigs and fair pigs and stuff. And realistically, vaccines are crucial to swine production, or you’ll just get these big huge crashes.

Glenda Pereira: 29:41

Yep. Yeah. And biosecurity is so some folks that have traveled, to pig farms or areas of the country that raise more of the pork production in The US, you know, a lot of those facilities tend to be biosecure because pigs can contract, a lot of diseases. And so one of the ways to prevent a disease, if you can, is to obviously vaccinate, or confine them so that they don’t have access to other pigs, or other, livestock species. So, that’s really important to consider as well.

Colt Knight: 30:25

Yeah. If you if you’re adding new pigs to your flock, you should quarantine them for a minimum of thirty days.

Glenda Pereira: 30:31

Make

Colt Knight: 30:33

sure that they’re vaccinated. If you’re buying just feeder piglets, ask the producer, did you vaccinate these piglets? You know, especially an iron shot is really important. Pigs are born iron deficient. And if they do not get supplemental iron about the first week that they’re alive, they’ll spend the rest of their life immunocompromised.

Colt Knight: 30:56

They’ll just get sick easier. They get scours easier. They have respiratory issues. And a lot of folks will pin that on just changing environment when in reality, it’s just the iron deficiency. And then once you get past about a week old, you can’t give it to them anymore.

Colt Knight: 31:16

It it doesn’t do anything. So Yep. Make sure that they at least have their iron shot. And two rounds of vaccinations before they’re weaned is ideal. And for grower pigs, you really don’t have to vaccinate them after those pre weaning, vaccines that because they’re gonna go to slaughter when they’re six to twelve months old.

Colt Knight: 31:37

But if you do have a reproductive herd, you should keep those things vaccinated. Yeah. And something that probably should talk about is deworming those pigs. Yep. Especially in these wet years when they’re outside living in the dirt, especially if the pigs are living in the same area from year to year, deworming noses.

Colt Knight: 32:00

I get that a lot too. And they’re like, I keep feeding my pigs and they’re not gaining any weight, you know? And I’m like, oh, that’s almost 100% they have some kind of internal parasite. Right. Yep.

Colt Knight: 32:12

And pigs are easy to deworm because they make dewormers that go in the water. They have paste dewormers and the pigs will just eat it out of your hands, you know, unlike some of our livestock species. And they make pellets that you can just mix with their feed. They have injectable dewormers, like some ivermectins are injectable. Those work good too.

Colt Knight: 32:36

If you have pigs, if you teach them about belly rubs when they’re real little, will just lay on their back and their eyeballs are rolling the back of their head while you’re rubbing their belly and you can give them whatever injection you want and they won’t even care.

Glenda Pereira: 32:52

Yeah. Yeah. No, like you said, prevention really is key when you’re raising any livestock, especially for pigs, getting ahead of some of these things and preparing yourself, will really help you cash out in that on that performance end of it. Right? So when we think about any of these livestock species, performance at the end of the day is kind of, you know, the biggest, factor in all of this.

Glenda Pereira: 33:17

We want those pigs to grow well. And especially if we’re gonna be selling them off our farm or using them for our own consumption. You know, all the money you put into raising that pig is, gonna be a profit to you if you have good performance. But that includes having appropriate housing, thinking about the feed, and like you mentioned, trying to prevent a lot of these, diseases or issues that they can have, along their life. I think we’ve covered most of it.

Glenda Pereira: 33:50

The last thing I wanted to just touch on was, the breeds. So you mentioned all of these breeds. But how do far so how do farmers kind of, new farmers make the decision of where do I start? So I have a goal. You know, I wanna raise pigs for consumption.

Glenda Pereira: 34:07

Is there a good sort of resource, where they can, look to, you know, to buy pigs? Is there like a website to find seed stock producers like you, Colt? Where do they kind of begin?

Colt Knight: 34:21

Having a list of producers is difficult in Maine. If you go to the breed association pages, the folks that are raising purebreds will be listed on there. There’s few and far between in New England. Yep. Most folks are going on social media to find their their pigs.

Colt Knight: 34:41

And I would caution you not to just to buy any any pig from anyone. Do your homework on which breeds. And if you’re just starting out, I highly recommend that you just get a commercial type pig with predictable growth. Yep. You know, almost all of the, meat processing centers will get a shipment of six to eight week old pigs in the spring, usually around Mother’s Day, that they sell for a hundred, hundred and $25 each.

Colt Knight: 35:10

And you can buy that pig and then, you know, in four or five months, it’s gonna be ready to eat. Yeah. And so and if you buy it from them, you can also schedule the slaughter date. Right. At while you’re picking the pick up.

Colt Knight: 35:21

So that’s a good place. There’s a lot of good local pig farmers, and there’s a lot of bad local pig farmers. So you need to do your research on that. You know, ask about vaccinations, Ask how long it takes that pig to grow, what the slaughter weight on that particular pig breed is going to be. If you’ve got a reputable pig breeder, they should be able to tell you within 10 pounds of how big that pig is going to be at what age.

Glenda Pereira: 35:48

Yeah.

Colt Knight: 35:49

If it’s all over the place, then the genetics are all over the place or they don’t keep records, and you don’t want that.

Glenda Pereira: 35:58

Yeah. That’s what I was gonna say. If you’re new to farming, I always encourage you to source somebody who has good records. Because if you’re gonna be doing this year to year, you want to have a good starting herd. Right?

Glenda Pereira: 36:18

So if you think about the genetics that you bring onto your farm or the animals that you bring onto your farm today that you wanna be here in five, ten years, if you’re wanting to do this long term, you don’t want, crappy animals. So ask about records. And if there’s good record keeping, there’s chances that you’re gonna get a good animal that you can then, either continue those management practices or adapt them a little bit. But you’re gonna have a good animal. And if you’re just starting out, like we mentioned, there’s gonna be a lot of other things that you’re gonna have to learn about.

Glenda Pereira: 36:52

So it’s it’s good to kind of have that reliable animal, already. You don’t have to worry about, you know, oh, I don’t know when this pig’s gonna finish. So I have to like, you know, it’s it’s nine to fifteen months and you’re like, okay, that’s a big range. You want to kind of eliminate a lot of those things. So finding somebody who’s reputable and has good records is certainly something that I would recommend if you’re just starting

Colt Knight: 37:16

out. Yeah, because there’s a lot of things on a pig when we go to take it to the meat processor that is really size dependent, not age dependent. You know, if we have a 200 pound pig, the belly is going to be so thin on that we cannot make bacon from that. So if you take a pig that is under condition or too small, you’re not going to get any bacon back. Everybody likes bacon, right?

Colt Knight: 37:41

Or the the like the baby back ribs are going to be too small to really do anything with, you know, so you lose a lot of good cuts by having them under conditioned. But what if they’re they’re too old or too fat? The older the animal gets, the muscle fibers get tougher and tougher. And so, older animals are you’re not gonna have as good a eating experience with. That’s why most older animals are just completely grounded in the sausage.

Colt Knight: 38:10

We don’t have any of that tough meat issues. But the other thing is, is once a pig is about 250 pounds, the feed is converted more towards fat than muscle. And so up until pretty recently, finishing weight on a pig was always two fifty pounds. Now with all of our livestock species, they’re getting bigger and bigger. We’re producing more the same amount of product or more product with less animals, just because it’s an economics thing at this point.

Colt Knight: 38:41

But that’s something to keep in mind is if we if we keep those pigs till they’re four hundred pounds, a lot of that’s just going to be fat. That is not something that we are consuming. That’s not a product we can sell. Especially on heritage breed pigs, they put on a lot of fat. You know, you might have a pork chop that’s two inches across, but have six inches of back fat on top of it.

Colt Knight: 39:04

We want to avoid that situation. So having those good predictable genetics, with good predictable feed, you can, like I said, you can guess within 10 or 20 pounds of what size that pig’s going to be at what age.

Glenda Pereira: 39:19

Yeah. So we’ve covered a lot today. But to sort of summarize the the main things that folks should be thinking about, you know, consider the environment the pig’s gonna live in. You want a dry, well ventilated place. You wanna think about where to feed those animals.

Glenda Pereira: 39:39

Manure storage is a big component of that as well. Make sure that your feed, is balanced for the nutrient requirements of the pig at whatever stage you purchase them at, because growing pigs have different needs than sows. So if you keep a a female and and and breed, that female to become a sow, to have a litter, they’re gonna have different energy needs. So consider that. Breeds are important too.

Glenda Pereira: 40:06

So the way we feed them to the way that they finish and how long. So thinking about, that those goals and if you wanna keep them over the winter in Maine or not. And, lastly, something that we mentioned was record keeping. So if you’re a new and beginning farmer, make sure that you’re finding a reputable source, from where you’re gonna get your animals. And record keeping is, you know, one of one of the easier questions that you can ask, because it’s also going to include whether they had vaccinated those animals or not.

Glenda Pereira: 40:36

And so that’s gonna start, you know, your really good health plan, and you can continue that health plan from there on out because preventing disease, is certainly cheaper than treating, for when those animals, become, ill. Did I miss anything, Cole?

Colt Knight: 40:55

Well, we could sit here and talk about pigs

Glenda Pereira: 40:57

all day.

Colt Knight: 40:57

But I think it’s important if folks have questions about raising pigs, they can contact me directly or they can email the the podcast at extension.farmcast@maine.edu. Glenda’s giving me the thumbs up. She’s a dairy person. She’s probably tired of talking about pigs. I like to talk

Glenda Pereira: 41:23

about pigs.

Colt Knight: 41:24

I can talk about pigs all day long.