Livestock costs

[Chickpea]

Stoney, that's absolutely brilliant. I've saved that in a file for future reference. Thanks a lot.

[Shirley]

And a final thought - who will look after the livestock if you're away and will you have to pay them? We do not have not anyone prepared to look after our livestock, so there always has to be one of us here (I've not had a night away from our place in almost two years so far).

Ummm I'm sure we could help out if you fancied some time away !!

[Stonehead]

Some more costs before I go to bed...

Hay - £7 for a large bale of good quality, ragwort free hay; up to £2 more for genuine, certified organic. Less for weedy rubbish
Straw - £2-3 for small bales of barley straw; £3-4 for oat straw
Bruised barley - £2-3 for a 25kg bag of good quality, organic barley but not certified; £3-5 for certified organic
Rolled oats - £3 for a 25kg bag. Can't get organic up here.
Sow rolls and finisher pellets - very complicated this as some are in 20kg bags, some in 25kg bags and some sold in bulk. Also, there's your commercial stuff, your GM free, your vegetarian, your added Omega 3, your drug free, your non-solvent extracted, your organic, and so on. Expect to pay more than £8 for a 20kg bag of good stuff and even more for certified organic.
Chick crumbs, layer and grower pellets - as with sow rolls only worse. Again, you're looking at around £8 a 20kg bag for good quality pellets and much more for organic.

Feeding pigs
Gilts between six months and first litter (10-16 months) will need 2.5kg a day. Ours are kept on grass and get fresh veg, so they get 1.8kg of dry feed a day - usually 1.2kg rolls and 0.6kg barley. Too much barley and they go to fat.
Then, three weeks before they go in with the boar, we start upping their dry feed so that they're getting 4kg of feed a day when they go in with him. Once they're in pig, the feed will drop back to 2.5kg a day. (Basically, up the sow rolls and then ease them back again.)
Once the sow has farrowed, feed goes back up to 3kg a day for six piglets or less; over six and it's another 0.5kg per piglet.
After weaning, the sow will drop back to 2kg of feed a day. She'll need less than before as she's now finished growing.
Growing boars need a lot of protein, so ours gets a higher proportion of barley in his total feed - he gets 0.8kg rolls and 0.8kg barley. (Plus grass and veg.) When he's mature, he'll get the same feed as a dry sow - 2kg of food a day with more rolls than barley.
Feeding finishing pigs gets more complicated as some breeds mature faster than others; others lay down fat more quickly. They need about 0.8-1.0kg a day from four weeks up to 10 weeks, but as they're still with the sow the easiest thing to do is give them ad lib feed in a trough they can get to but the sow can't. They'll then eat what they need.
From 10 weeks to 16 weeks, they need around 1.6kg of feed a day and from 16 weeks to 24 weeks up to 2.5kg of feed a day.

Having said that, I don't stick to the weights religiously - I prefer to run my hand along their spines every day. If I can just feel the bone, then they're about right. If they feel boney, they're too thin and if the bone can't be felt they're too fat. Not scientific but it seems to work!

Our saddleback weaners are just coming up to 23 weeks and until yesterday were getting 2.3kg of feed a day. However, boars grow faster at this stage (and are becoming sexually mature) so they get separated out now and will be fed more over the next fortnight to four weeks before they're killed.
The sows are slightly smaller and will stay another two to four weeks after the boars go.

Oh, and our three gilts have eaten just under 2 tonnes of bought-in feed in the past year. Our porkers (last year's GOS and this year's saddlebacks) have eaten 1.37 tonnes so far.

That's 3.37 tonnes of feed at a cost of £180 for barley and £429 for rolls - a total of £609 for 11 pigs.

Feed is around 75% of the cost of keeping pigs over a five-year period. Obviously, we've had high start up costs because we've had to convert the byre, do fencing, buy a trailer (and a replacement one), provide housing, pay vet's bills, buy tools and clothing, etc. Then there are the costs of transport, slaughter (about £25-30 per pig), and butchering (£20 per pig).

So don't expect a proper return until about year three if you're breeding. If you're just fattening them for your own table, then you have to balance the costs against the savings of buying meat, as well as considering the moral, taste, animal welfare and "feel good factor" issues.

Our aim is to break even over the long term while preserving rare breeds, having a good time and enjoying what we eat knowing exactly how it was reared.



NOTE: All prices are for Aberdeenshire and you will find a lot of regional variation.

[Chickpea]

I've saved this as well. Cheers Stoney.

[Stonehead]

I've saved this as well. Cheers Stoney.

I hope the pig figures make sense - I was absolutely knackered, had had a couple of nettle beers and was about ready to fall over and sleep on the floor!

The main thing to remember is that the figures for feed are for everything they eat - so grass, vegetables, barley, sow rolls, finisher pellets, etc. If you keep them outside on grass and give them vegetables you've grown yourself, you will keep the costs down and they'll be healthier and happier.

However, it can be difficult finishing porkers to the same standard as each other when they're outside all the time. This doesn't matter when you're only fattening them for your table (or for understanding friends), but you may have to compromise a little when supplying "proper" customers who expect to get a consistent product. And believe me, people do quibble about their butchered half pig weighing half a kilo less than the last one they had, or being slightly more or less fatty.

As a result, we try to keep the porkers outside as much as possible but bring them in for their final month or so. We cut grass for them and give them veg, but we can more finely control the amount of feed each pig gets.

Another advantage of doing it this way is that we get pig muck and straw for the vegetable garden. (Four pigs kept inside for four weeks produce a lot of muck!)