Anyone that would try to play any part in enforcing regulations about whether someone can feed his own kitchen scraps to his own pig which is being raised for his own family’s consumption deserves to be hanged.
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As a child, my mom would pick the non-food materials out of my great grandfathers hog pens. If the inspectors saw the evidence of school cafeteria waste, they could be fined or shut-down. This is in GA, and was a long time ago. This type of regulation is surprising; although, a pigs immune system is very similar to our own.
People should certainly have say regarding their own property.
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There is the law and there is the enforced law. Only the latter really matters.
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Hi Rick, I’d be curious to know how this all played out now that its been a few years.
If i had more land I would have a few Meishans in a heartbeat. Only one of my neighbors would complain now if i had a few.
Check out Joel Salatin’s stuff on pastures pork. I will say that anything eaten from the pasture is purely supplemental and they move the pigs when the large feeder is empty. I also saw an interview of a pig farmer a while back that was very straightforward about trying to raise a few hogs. In short, he said you’re going to lose money until you have 20 or more sows. That’s the point where the cost efficiency of buying bulk feed levels out.
Someday I may use a pig or two to seal a pond while also feeding them all the drops and waste we have. For now chickens do just fine at consuming waste and drops.
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I grew up on a pig farm. They spent some time on pasture. Like 20 acres for maybe 50 pigs. Now I’m in Texas where they have hundreds or thousands of acres of “pasture”. And cause massive damage. I doubt many people with my background want anything to do with pigs.
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Of course this is from a YouTuber, so take it with a grain of salt, but he does share some numbers and a rough spread sheet. He did appear to use a lot of apples and other veggies as part of his feed. Perhaps the most surprising cost to me was the cost of the butchering, which might be lower if it is for personal consumption and you don’t need a USDA licensed butcher.
You can jump forward to 21:30 if you just want to see him go through the final numbers. He sold the meat as half shares (half a pig) at $6.25, of which roughly $3 came out as profit. I wouldn’t be surprised it fhat probably works out to 10 cents an hour if he included his time…
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That was one of my thoughts too. The feed bill was only 500 bucks, but who was picking up all those drops. We pick up peach drops to keep SWD numbers down, but apple drops we leave. It takes a significant amount of time to pick up drops.
Once we picked some old sweet corn for a customer to feed her chickens. I was surprised how much time that took. I think it would have been cheaper to buy bulk feed than the cost to hire labor to hand pick old sweet corn for feed.
The guy in the vid did get a really good price for his pigs though. I’m a bit surprised customers would pay $8.50 per lb. for a menagerie of pork cuts and sausage. That’s more expensive than pork loin here (the most expensive part of the pig).
Interesting post. Thanks.
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Looks like jobs there for the kids.
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One would be hard pressed around here to find anyone that would pay $6.25 a lb + processing for pork. I dont even think you could fetch that price selling at the farmers market.
Just checked… a lb of sausage at krogers is $3 to $5
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$200 seems to be on the high side for feeder pigs, too.
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Shockingly high. I’m sure the guy in the vid had to buy them from a hyper small operation, sort of hobbyist operator like himself. So the person he’s buying feeder pigs from is in the same boat. Has sky high labor costs, so he passes those onto his customer (the feeder pig buyer).
There aren’t many feeder pigs traded on a cash basis anymore, so there isn’t much of a market for them.
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The pricing of meat and produce is so varied when it comes to small growers and their locations. In general, I assume farmers market and specialty grower prices will be double normal grocery store prices, but that definitely varies a lot by locality.
In the case of the guy in the video, he has a large following and enough people who will pay a premium for meat they see as better because the pigs aren’t shot full of antibiotics, get fed all those apples, etc. Most wouldn’t know that they aren’t buying some gourmet variety like mulefoot, mangalica or other fancy/rare breeds, but people who grow those do get a premium as well often being able to sell to restaurants in bulk. Of course, selling 3 pigs is a lot different than scaling that up to 100 and still finding enough people to buy at the higher price.
As another example of varying prices, I saw on FB people paying $7/lb for pick-your-own persimmons in NJ (admittedly hybrid and other lesser-known types), while I was able to pick up pounds and pounds of non-astringent persimmons at a local market yesterday for $.98/lb.
When I think of how challenging farming can be, particularly for smaller farmers doing most things on their own, I’m actually amazed they can survive even when they are getting the higher prices.
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That’s very true. It’s kind of a weird partnership. For the most part the small lower income farmers rely on the more on the affluent segment of society to sell their products. Their products really aren’t affordable to lesser income people.
I know this is a challenge for us. Our orchard is on the MO side which is mostly blue collar folks. But we get some people from the KS side (Johnson county, which is the wealthiest county in KS) but the majority of our customers are from MO.
We have to keep our prices pretty low (relative to farmer’s markets) and close to grocery store prices, or we lose business. We sold apples for $1.50 per lb. this season. Blackberries for $4.50 per lb. Tomatoes for $3 per lb. Tart cherries for $4.50 per lb. Pumpkins for 50 cents/lb. All those prices are tax included.
I think all are pretty close to grocery store prices, except for maybe tomatoes. But tomatoes are so crappy in the grocery store, most people are willing to pay a premium for a decent tasting tomato. Peaches likewise are $3 per lb. when had them last year. Those are also substantially better than the grocery store.
But for the vast amount of hours I put in the operation, and for the investment in capital tied up, there really isn’t much ROI in the end. My wife has a day job, which helps a lot.
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Maybe 50 years ago a great job for kids , I’m not so sure now probably in violation of something.
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This is from the processor i use for our beef cattle.
These bundles includes everything (the animal & processing). I purchase a pork bundle once a year, when I pick up our 1/2 beef. Its good quailty pork, individually packaged. They also do a great job with our beef. The bundle prices shown does not include tax.
This is why I said one would be hard pressed to find anyone around here that would pay $6.25 a lb plus processing for pork.
I can purchase a 1/2 pork bundle for $244. Thats $44 more than the guy in the video paid for a feeder pig. I’ve not looked into the price of feeder pigs around here. But live pigs traded for $0.82 a lb today. Be sure to scroll to the bottom of the page and read about live pigs, good info there.
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is it worth trying these special breeds for pasture? I would think so although it goes more in the direction of hobby and less so profit.
Thats why i want to go with Meishans. They are the most friendly, dosile, non rooting breed. Meat is very heavily marbled and more akin to red meat or commercial pork before the “other white meat” movement started.
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