Selfsufficientish.com

The price for pig food in hungary is rapidly increasing and I'm wondering what I could grow in a new vegetable patch which would be suitable for feeding piggies. I know that they eat virtually anything but my soil is fine sand and the Hungarian summers do get hot(>30°C)!. I'm not a great gardener and this would be my first venture into this so something which doesn't need a lots of skill/time/care would be ideal :) Any suggestions would be great!

Andy

A really interesting topic,I'll chuck out a few ideas,then think about things,and praps amend later.
Firstly, the expensive bit is the protein,therefore think legume.You can grow spuds(littleones too small for humans,were called pig potatoes) but you'd do well to boil (then cool) them first,but you'll need to add a good bit of cereal if they're going to fatten well.(not so much for maitaining non pregnant stock pigs). They like ,and will eat without cooking ,jerusalem artichokes and mangels,but there aint a lot of protein in these either.
But here's a thought,in the days when farms were real pigs were there to use up what was left in a mixed system.This was finally killed off by the b------s who decided swill could no longer be fed(if boiled for long enough it's 100% safe and pigs do brilliantly on it). Not many EC countries follow the letter of the law as they do in UK,if you live in such a place,the answers clear,get cooking! and add WHATEVER you can grow, scavenge(non meat) or whatever to the mix.

Best Wishes.

Acorns or other nuts, sunflower seeds, squash and melons, sugar beets or mangels, comfrey, clovers, peanuts, etc. Root veggies especially would like sandy soil.

Unless you get plenty of rainfall in summer or are willing to keep it well watered you are going to struggle to grow most things in fine sand. Perhaps you should look at what grows well around you. The only thing I can think of that hasn't been mentioned is buckwheat, this grows in sandy conditions.

What about Jerusalem Artichokes

I think we will try to grow some maize, sunflowers and some beets

We feed broken potatoes (not green & must be cooked, so a good winter warmer), neeps (Swedes/rutabaga), fodder beets, mangels, bruised barley, crushed peas, fodder carrots, jerusalem artichokes and the like. It's important to have some idea of the protein content and also the amount of lysine so you can give them a balanced diet.

We feed the pigs the corn plants (and some corn), finely chopped and kept in plastic under a layer of sand. I am sorry, I do not know the English term.. Ensiled?
And we are going to grow a lot of wheat, beets, cabage, etc.

Jorieke123 wrote:We feed the pigs the corn plants (and some corn), finely chopped and kept in plastic under a layer of sand. I am sorry, I do not know the English term.. Ensiled?
And we are going to grow a lot of wheat, beets, cabage, etc.

The english term would be silage - like a sauerkraut made of green matter without the salt!

A fella i used to know in france used to raid supermarket bins. Most of the food he found was good enough for human consumption but a lot was genuinly mouldy and only good enough for his pigs. He also used to collect scraps from local restaurants in exchange for a cheeky bit of bacon come slaughter time.

Not that long ago,a large % of the smaller pig enterprises in the uk did just that.Food establishments were given large bins which they put food waste in,the local pig man,or his mate/assistant/offspring would collect,and leave an empty bin.All this was boiled,in a (hopefully)licensed swill boiler,making it perfectly safe,then cooled and fed.Pigs LOVE it,they grow well,waste is economically recycled,happy days.........course it's all illegal now........