Most bur oaks I’ve grown from seed and planted have been bearing good crops of acorns, annually, by the time they are 8-10 yrs of age. Large-acorn strain - 20-25/lb or larger should work fine in 6b.
As discussed earlier, mulberry was traditionally a part of pork & poultry production on Southern farmsteads.with ‘everbearing’ types preferred.
You should read this. It’s right up your alley.
Smith and Hershey presaged and inspired many of the future tenets and strategies of the permaculture movement espoused by Bill Mollison and others. They saw tree crops as the key foundation of an agriculture that provided food for people, timber, and feed for livestock. Hershey, for instance, recommended the following for hog feed: “all the nuts, the American triplets [honey locust, persimmon, and white oak], their little sisters the mulberries and paw paws”; for chickens he recommended serviceberry, mulberry, persimmon, pawpaw, mountain ash, haws and hawthorn, and cracked nuts for winter feeding.
Growing oaks down there must be another world than I’m used to.
I don’t know this for a fact, but someone I know, who has been doing silviculture pork production for years, swears that hogs will not touch a pawpaw fruit.
I’d be more interested inclined to plant persimmon rather than pawpaw - both for hogs, as well as myself - both for productivity and flavor.
Great project! I would look at a variety of species and varieties to come up with a design to produce mast over as long a season as possible. Mulberry, honeylocust, Chinese chestnut, apples, pears, persimmon, oaks, hazels etc. Check out J Russel Smith seminal book “Tree Crop, a Perennial Agriculture “. Eliza Evans may be a good resource since she’s in your zone. Her website is Hogtree.com
Harrow delight, ayers, Duchess D’ Angoulme, and improved kieffer / Kieffer might be good choices of pears. There are many others. They ripen in July / August , September , Oct/Nov . You dont want them all ripe at once. Pigs rub trees and kill them. You will need to protect the trunks. You might also consider persimmon and pawpaw. The nuts like pecan, hickory, black walnut, acorn, english walnut, heartnut, butternut, and chestnuts would all be readily consumed. Hazelnut bushes are too small to hold up to pigs.
If you fenced hazelnuts off like mine shown below, they would be fine. They are no match for pigs for even a day or two.
My grandpa and i observed his hogs in the very wooded rocky area he owned many times. We discussed them eating acorns, black walnuts , snakes, and other things many times. Noticed a pig once in the distance, and i told my grandpa i couldn’t tell what that was the sow was eating. I observed a long time, but eventually, my grandfather told me the hog was cracking rocks in its jaws to get to the minerals in the rock. He said, “Remember that don’t underestimate the half wild sows.”
You should definitely purchase the book Tree Crops which discusses this topic at depth.
I’d add to this a leguminous tree: honey locust. The pods are 26% sugar according to the book
got some sugar beet and mangel forage beet seeds im going to grow for my animals. bet that would fatten up pigs quickly and they grow great in less than ideal conditions also.
Have you grown sugar beets and mangels before?
I have once.
Find out if there is anybody pressing cider anywhere near you. It generates buckets of apple mush that pigs, chickens, goats, cows, and just about any other farm animal love to eat.
no but i read up on them.
Major PITA growing either of one them IME. They need constant weed control as the seedlings have little vigor. They also require lots of K and N if you want big roots. Loose soil without rocks also required for big roots.
Western MN along the Red River is sugar beet country. Beautiful silt and clay loams several feet deep with high nutrient levels. They grow RR beets though, so weed control isn’t an issue.
Good luck with them, and I hope you do better with them than I have.
the spot im planting them in is nice loam with little rocks. was a milk farm 40 years ago and its pretty fertile. i plan to grow them in between wood chip mulch to control weeds and help hold water. something to try.
I’ve had some of Eliza’s meat products, and they are very good!
I’ve been growing a number of ‘everbearing’ type hybrid mulberries for nearly 30 years. While they are heavy producers - we eat them fresh off the tree, and the birds take a lot, and a lot fall to the ground - I have serious doubts about claims that one 20-yr old tree can provide all the feed 6 market hogs need for 2 months… I have serious doubts that you could sustain ONE hog exclusively on the fallen fruit from one tree. I’m sure they enjoy the ‘dessert’, but let’s say I’m very sceptical about reasonable weight gains if they’re not being provided anything else.
I have Hicks Everbearing… just coming into production… but unless it’s several orders of magnitude more productive than Illinois Everbearing or Silk Hope… I think those claims are incredibly inflated. I’m also given to understand that HE fruits are not particularly flavorful… but hogs and chickens aren’t noted for their discerning palates.
However, I’m willing to have my mind changed if someone has some substantial documentation of production records.
But it does remind me of this old tale that I remember my Dad telling…
*A salesman is driving down a country road and breaks down a little ways from a farmhouse, so he walks up the driveway to see if he can use the phone. In the front yard, he finds the farmer, who is picking up a pig and holding it up so the pig can bite an apple off the tree.
The farmer puts the pig down while the pig eats the apple, and then picks the pig up again so the pig can get another apple. This goes on for about five minutes while the salesman watches – pick the pig up, get the apple, put the pig down – about half a dozen times.
Finally the salesman can’t stand it, and says to the farmer, “Wouldn’t it save a lot of time if you just shook the tree and let the pig eat the apples off the ground?!?”
The farmer looks at the salesman and says, “What’s time to a pig?”
If i were planting trees to accommodate raising pigs, i would plant both soft and hard mast trees. A few apples and pears, a few chinese chestnuts, and some swamp oaks. Chestnuts and swamp oaks both start producing nuts at a relatively young age, and can provide a decent amount of forage.
No matter what you plant, make sure you fence them off so the pigs dont root them out or girdle the trees.
I want to thank everyone who has contributed to this thread. This is a direction that I’ve considered going in with the back half of my property, by growing chestnut trees and interplanting D.V. persimmons.
Do it as a forage crop. Till and plant it, then fence it and set them out on it come fall. Probably a little harder than I’m making it sound, but not much. And It should be viable for many years from a single planting. I’ve only ever seen them decline from lack of harvest. If you try to dig them all, they thrive the next year. If you lead them be, they aren’t nearly as aggressive as their reputation would have you believe.
