Ordering Feed

[YooperFarmer]

Hey There,

I'm a new member here and a new pig farmer. My in-laws have had 4-H hogs before and we are working together to raise up two hogs for our freezers this winter. I'll preface this with we are trying to do things a little differently, so the in laws haven't been much help.

We got two borrows yesterday and they came home with 40lbs of feed. I'm looking to order feed from our local feed store and asked about organic and non-gmo options. They have a non-gmo option available but said I just needed to tell them what I wanted. I started out by asking about pig feed, so I assumed they would know what to do, but evidently I have options. We're looking for a grower blend for pigs who were born in Feb 16. What am I missing? Am I supposed to tell her all of the ingredients I want in it? I'm sorry if this sounds dumb, but I've always just been able to walk into a feed store and pick out what I want, I've never had to call ahead to order 1,000lbs of it. This is a little different than horses and chickens.

Fill me in, what do I need to know about pig feed being mixed by a feed store?

Thanks in advance!

 

[Latestarter]

I think the primary consideration is protein content. I believe you can select between blends to have like 16% - 20% or maybe even higher. What I would recommend is to actually read the ingredients on a sack of hog food that you would normally buy, then ask for the specific blend in the bulk form to see how close they match, then go from there. Of course stipulating non-GMO and Organic is going to raise the price quite a bit, and in some places finding both of those in a feed is near impossible...

Maybe others would have a better idea/recommendation: @Ferguson K @secuono @jk47 @jhm47 @purplequeenvt @Pamela @Mini Horses or so many others with pig experience... Good luck and hope you get it worked out.

 

[Baymule]

If you have chickens, you can give them boiled eggs, in the shell, because they have lysine in them, an essential nutrient for hogs. Eggs must be cooked for the full nutrient value, raw eggs actually rob nutrients from the animal. Milk, or milk products such as whey, also has lysine in it. Since this is summer, you can also feed trimmings and vegetables from the garden. If you have fruit trees, you can gather up all the dropped fruit for them.

I grew out 3 pigs over the winter and had them butchered this spring. I fed a hog grower feed. I looked at non GMO and organic, but the price was astronomical.

The best pig information on the entire web can be found here. http://sugarmtnfarm.com/

 

[YooperFarmer]

Excellent. Thank you for these responses. Hopefully tomorrow I'll get more info from the fees store. They were supposed to call me yesterday.

To get non gmo feed here we have to eliminate corn and soy, so replacing the protein is important. No idea what it costs yet. I'm super rural, so not many options.

 

[Pamela]

We use wheat that we procured from a local research farm. We soak it with molasses water that we get from a friend (not sure but I think it is from the local sugar beet plant). We feed this to our sows and to our feeders. Our feeders are 4-h so we supplement with hog grower from our local feed mill. It is pelletized and pre formulated, but provides all the protein they need. We will also supply a small ration of soy protein to our nursing sows. 9 piglets can take the weight right off them. We give them lots of produce from our local market's dumpster. So we are not organic or GMO free, but our pigs grow like crazy and seem healthy enough.

 

[19disbre]

To answer your original question, just ask for their 16% grower, you can feed it to them their whole life and they will do well on it. As you learn about raising hogs you can deviate a little but when your beginning trust that the feed mill knows their stuff. Pigs are pretty forgiving, you can feed them a lot of blends between 12-18% protein including some dairy rations