Farrowing sisters together?

[misfitmorgan]

6-8week old 4h feeders here sell for $75-100 each...offseason you can still sell young feeders for atleast $50-60 usually. Check out your local pig market and see how it looks then you can decide if you wanna breed and when and your game plan. We breed for feeders and we raise and sell finished hogs as well.

 

[farmerjan]

I just want to say that I am aware of the different types of boar taint, and that there are several breeds that do not SEEM to have any. But since the androstenone is due to the maturation of a boar's testes, and this boar has been used for breeding before they got him and again for their own gilts, that alone will almost guarantee that there will be a certain amount of the "taint" in the fat deposits, regardless of the cleanliness of the surroundings. I certainly would not want to kill a boar of that size that has been used for breeding and then find I cannot eat the meat. Haven't used any of the new immunizations that are touted to suppress the hormone systems and remove the taint from the fat, although they do hold some promise for the use of boar hogs that are no longer used as breeders. Since it also has to do with sexual maturing, and this boar is of standard size hogs, and has been a breeder, I would bet he has some taint. That was where I said he would have taint due to his size. Most intact male pigs that are killed before 200 lbs or so will have little or none; after becoming sexually active all bets are off even in the breeds that have low incidence.

 

[misfitmorgan]

I just want to say that I am aware of the different types of boar taint, and that there are several breeds that do not SEEM to have any. But since the androstenone is due to the maturation of a boar's testes, and this boar has been used for breeding before they got him and again for their own gilts, that alone will almost guarantee that there will be a certain amount of the "taint" in the fat deposits, regardless of the cleanliness of the surroundings. I certainly would not want to kill a boar of that size that has been used for breeding and then find I cannot eat the meat. Haven't used any of the new immunizations that are touted to suppress the hormone systems and remove the taint from the fat, although they do hold some promise for the use of boar hogs that are no longer used as breeders. Since it also has to do with sexual maturing, and this boar is of standard size hogs, and has been a breeder, I would bet he has some taint. That was where I said he would have taint due to his size. Most intact male pigs that are killed before 200 lbs or so will have little or none; after becoming sexually active all bets are off even in the breeds that have low incidence.

Well us and most of the people who we know that breed pigs eat their boars....we dont use tainted boars for breeding. Last year we slaughtered our 600lb boar..no taint. We commonly slaughter boars in the 400lb range who are/were actively breeding and have yet to come across boar taint based on their size or if they have bred or not. We can taste taint and have found it in 1 pig...ever and it was a sow who came from a confinement. We host yearly whole hog roasts with our boars as the hogs for the spit and no one has ever tasted boar taint on them. So no i would not agree that size has anything to do with it...either a boar has taint from genetics or a boar has taint from their environment....period. There is studies that show that to be a fact, that it is genetic. Many many farms in the US and around the world esp in the UK are breeding lines without taint so they no longer need to castrate. The odds of the boar in question here having taint are extremely low.

 

[misfitmorgan]

Also this is an interesting summary read on a study done comparing enacted male, castrated males and female pigs for taint. To sum it up they use 1,609 hogs split into three groups intacted males, Castrated males, and females. So each group had roughly 536 hogs..these are commercial hogs so confinement raised. The test showed 10% of the intacted Males having a Skatole level over 0.25ppm...so 54 hogs out of 536. The study goes on to say that castrated males had lower scores and were more preferred...of course lol...thats rather obvious and why people castrate. The full study is more interesting and goes into more details.

On a side note though...for a human to taste or smell taint it has to measure over 0.50ppm, so double what their threshold for the test was, so in reality it was less then 10% of the intacted males who had taint a human would notice.

 

[Jayzandra]

You did help us. And we're not discouraged.

There is definitely a market for pigs around here. They go anywhere from $100-$150 each as weaners. If we got 10 babies from each sow twice a year, that's $4,000 a year. We already have a bunch of people wanting some and they're not even born yet. I talked to my husband last night, and he wants to keep the boar. They each eat about a bag of feed a week. Feed is less than $15 a bag. That's about $2400 a year in feed cost, so we'll be making a profit. IF we get 10 in a litter.

Our pigs are Hampshire/Yorkshire crosses. Sometimes I think I can smell taint, sometimes not. So I don't know. The gilt's brother tasted good. We slaughtered him at 250lbs. So, since he didn't have taint, does that mean the others won't either? He was kept in the same pen.

 

[misfitmorgan]

Same pen, same conditions, and brother to your boar and being a low taint breed to boot, not raising in confinement odds are very very high he has no taint. Like i said the study found less then 10% with taint detectable to humans and that was in a confinement...basically the riskiest way to raise a pig as far as Skatole taint.

Age is more important then weight for detecting Androstenone taint....meaning whether the boar is sexually mature or not. We have seen boars who are 300lbs by 6 months old and boars who are 8 months old and barely 250lbs. Also everyone is on and on about sexually maturity making them have taint...boars are able to impregnant at as young as 4 months old yet most people dont allow their boars to breed until 7-8months old...so where exactly is that line where "tainit" kicks in?? Thats why myself and many others dont go by size or age...we just go by smell and do the things we know cut down on the chance of taint.

 

[farmerjan]

Take into account that when the sows have pigs they will be eating a fair amount more and the pigs will be eating quite a bit from the time they get into feed (approx 4 weeks when they really will start to like and eat feed) until you sell them, so your feed costs will definitely be higher. If they only wean 8 per litter and the added feed costs may not make you much money but will definitely "pay" for your pigs to eat.

 

[misfitmorgan]

You did help us. And we're not discouraged.

There is definitely a market for pigs around here. They go anywhere from $100-$150 each as weaners. If we got 10 babies from each sow twice a year, that's $4,000 a year. We already have a bunch of people wanting some and they're not even born yet. I talked to my husband last night, and he wants to keep the boar. They each eat about a bag of feed a week. Feed is less than $15 a bag. That's about $2400 a year in feed cost, so we'll be making a profit. IF we get 10 in a litter.

Our pigs are Hampshire/Yorkshire crosses. Sometimes I think I can smell taint, sometimes not. So I don't know. The gilt's brother tasted good. We slaughtered him at 250lbs. So, since he didn't have taint, does that mean the others won't either? He was kept in the same pen.

I didnt notice until Jan pointed it out....how many lbs per $15 bag of feed? Cause $2400/yr to feed three adult pigs is very high like $1500 to high. Our breeder pigs cost $300 each per year to feed for the whole year on commercial feed. Each piglets cost us $1.10 per week to feed so approx $5 in feed if we sell them by 8 weeks old. Only other costs we have are Iron and wormer....we dont clip teeth, tails, or notch ears. Typical litter that survives to be sold is 9 piglets so we make approx $450-900 depending on time of year before feed costs which would be $40 for all 9 piglets if they are sold by 8 weeks old. Each Gilt/sow has 2 litters a year one in the off season one for 4h kids making us on average $1350 per adult sow/gilt.

Our meat pigs cost us between $50 to $120 to raise to slaughter. We sell finished hogs for 2.50lb hanging so a 250lb live hog makes us approx $438 before feed costs.

So if you boil that all down we make approx $1,000 per adult sow/gilt per year if we sell all piglets from her after we take off her feed costs.
So far the most finished hogs we have raised for sale per year is 8 giving us a profit of $2,540 plus $50 for the left over piglet we sold at 8 weeks.

 

[NH homesteader]

How on earth do you raise a pig to slaughter weight for $50? How much do you pay for feed? Sheesh I would raise a ton of pigs if it was that cheap!

Now I'm off to calculate what it costs me to raise one... I know it isn't that low though!

 

[misfitmorgan]

How on earth do you raise a pig to slaughter weight for $50? How much do you pay for feed? Sheesh I would raise a ton of pigs if it was that cheap!

Now I'm off to calculate what it costs me to raise one... I know it isn't that low though!

The $50 is slaughtering suckling pigs....at 4 months old.