7 Common Myths About Raising Backyard Pigs

Pigs are a great animal to raise on the homestead. They require minimal attention, and can thrive on infertile or barren land. They will eat just about anything (within reason…we’ll get to that!) and are relatively friendly, easy-to-care-for animals. However, if you have never raised pigs before, it can be a daunting proposition. The Internet, in particular, is full of misinformation and downright lies.

Don’t let yourself be dissuaded. The following are common myths related to raising pigs, along with some serious benefits to be considered.

Myth #1: Pigs will eat anything and everything.

Pigs are omnivores, and are incredibly opportunistic. They will eat anything that appeals to them, but in most cases you don’t have to worry about them eating anything that is downright inedible, or dangerous. While they will eat just about anything, including poultry or even rodents, that doesn’t mean that you should feed them whatever you want.

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Pigs should not eat meat. A common myth is that feeding pigs meat makes them mean, which is not true, but what you do have to worry about is disease. In many places, including the United States, it is illegal to feed meat to pigs because they can spread disease, such as trichinosis, in this fashion.

Remember that you are what you eat, and that’s especially true for pigs. If you feed a pig a lot of apples, the meat will have an apple flavor. If you feed them lots of garbage, well … you get the drift.

Myth #2: Pigs do — and should — get really fat

Obese pigs are just as unhealthy as obese people. A misconception is that a fatter pig will lend to a larger quantity of meat. While the pig will be heavier, you will end up cutting off most of that fat and throwing it away. The meat will have less flavor and you will end up with the same amount of meat as if your pig had been at a healthy weight.

Myth #3: Pigs are smelly

Pigs prefer to be clean. If you don’t provide them with a clean living space, sure, they will begin to stink. But under most conditions, pigs will clean for themselves. In my experience, pigs will defecate and urinate away from their sleeping area, and will kick bedding out of their sleeping area when it has become too soiled. Close confinement lends to odors, not lack of cleanliness on the part of the pig. That being said, many people try to raise pigs in a small, cramped pen. They will live and grow in this setting, but they will be leaner, healthier and less smelly in a larger pen. Another myth to dispel? Pig meat is not “tough” when the pigs are allowed to roam about.

Myth #4: Pigs are aggressive

Pigs are actually relatively affectionate. Although they can become aggressive when challenging each other, or when threatened, they usually won’t show aggression under normal circumstances.

Myth #5: You don’t need to spay or neuter

While pigs aren’t usually aggressive, pigs that are not spayed or neutered can engage in sexual activities that can cause injury. Containing animals that aren’t fixed can be a challenge, as well, as a boar will charge through a fully electrified fence if he is lusting after an available sow. Unless you are planning on raising piglets, have this matter taken care of. Health concerns such as testicular, mammary, ovarian, and uterine cancers can affect intact pigs, just as they can humans.

Myth #6: Having a single pig is better than multiple, as they can’t catch disease

Although some disease are communicated between pigs, a single pig can become infected with a parasite. For example, Erysipelas is a bacteria that is commonly found in the soil and can be picked up in the yard. For true disease prevention, make sure your pigs have plenty of space to roam and receive vaccinations and parasite control. There are several at-home parasite control remedies you can utilize if you don’t want to enlist the help of a veterinarian.

Having multiple pigs is actually beneficial, as raising three pigs doesn’t create any more work for you than just one. Further, pigs are social creatures, and will be more content with friends to play with. Increased competition for food usually inspires additional eating, helping your pigs to grow more quickly and increase your yield.

Myth #7: Pigs are dumb

Pigs are actually extremely intelligent. They can solve problems, learn and observe. Many studies have actually reported pigs being able to manipulate latches or engage in other trained behaviors.

Benefit #1: Pigs are fun

Pigs are compassionate, friendly creatures who engage in incredibly entertaining antics. They enjoy playing with each other, and will chase and playfully nip at each other throughout the day. Ours were known to play with their feeder, flipping it upside down and nosing it around their pen. Although this ended up being quite a nuisance, their hilarious routines did give us a chuckle every afternoon.

Benefit #2: Pigs can recycle

Pigs won’t eat everything, and each pig, like a human, actually has individual taste preferences. We had one, for example, that hated zucchini and would eat everything in its trough besides zucchini. However, in many cases, pigs are a great way to get rid of extra produce from the garden, milk from the cow, or items close to their expiration date in the refrigerator. Having pigs can really cut down on your food waste, and there’s nothing more enjoyable than feeding your pigs some scraps from the kitchen.

Benefit #3: Pigs are not time-consuming

As I mentioned, if you have one pig, you can have three pigs. Or seven, or 10 or 15 (well, maybe there’s a little more work then). If you set up an automatic feeding and watering system, and have plenty of space, there’s not much else you need to do besides occasionally change bedding and fill the feeders and waterers once or twice a week.

Benefit #4: You don’t need many to get a return on your investment

Although you can make a profit from just one or two pigs, having several is ideal to allow you to earn a higher return on investment. With no additional work and a bit more in additional feed costs, you can sell the meat for cash or raise a boar and sow through the winter to produce piglets. Piglets generally cost at least a hundred dollars apiece, and a sow can produce 10-20 piglets a year, under optimal conditions.

Raising pigs for meat isn’t for everybody, but if you’re considering this endeavor, by all means, jump right in. It is an enjoyable experience that can help you save money, raise delicious pork, and have fun at the same time.

What advice would you add for raising pigs? Share it in the section below:

Silvopasturing: It’s The Cheap Way Our Ancestors Cleared Land

Is your new farm filled with dead or dying trees? Or, perhaps, are you interested in converting old forest into new pasture for cattle? Silvopasturing may be the way to go.

The concept of silvopasturing is not new. It dates back to the colonial days, when nearly every family owned and raised hogs. Pigs were primarily fed scraps from the family farm, and in the fall, right before slaughter, they were run up into the forest. Once there, they were left to their own devices, foraging for food to fatten them up for the butcher. They targeted (as they still do, if given access) soft and hard mass crops. Soft crops might include acorns, hickory nuts, pecans, and walnuts, while soft typically consisted of wild apples, hawthorns and paw paws.

When the rise of factory farming came about, people moved away from family farms. Pigs were raised primarily in confinement. Now, however, with the rise of the homesteading movement, people are starting to get their pigs back on pasture.

How to Get Started

That’s were silvopasture comes in. Tree lots can—and should—be viewed as more than just providers of summer shade. They provide diversity to a grazing diet, and conversely, grazing livestock can improve the quality of the trees by controlling undesirable weeds and brush.

It involves sectioning off parcels of woodlands in order to create a symbiotic relationship between animals and forest. Pigs gain a food benefit as well as shade and shelter from the elements. The forest benefits as the pig naturally fertilizes the soil as it goes and becomes part of the decomposition process by clearing old stumps and brush.

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Silvopasturing requires appropriate attention and management so that livestock and trees can both see benefits. The key problem with unsuccessful silvopasturing is that a pig’s natural instinct to root can be very destructive. In a grassland setting, a pig’s rutting may not allow an ecosystem to come back around for months or even years. This is especially true if the pig is able to expose the earth to bare dirt. In a woodland setting, trees—even mature species—can become damaged or shocked as a result of the pig’s digging and nosing around near the roots. This could set a tree back a few years or kill it altogether.    

Before you make the decision to silvopasture, decide what your goal is for your woodlot. If you  want to run your pigs in a colonial fashion so that your pigs can benefit from the forest’s nutrition and the trees also will flourish, then be careful how many pigs and for how long you allow them to remain in a specific area. If your goal is to clear brushy undergrowth that is not a productive forest, then the pigs may remain for a longer period of time and ultimately destroy the trees.

Good silvopasturing allows the forest to see equal benefit. If you have a large section of woods that you are trying to maintain with pigs, you should divide it into several paddocks. Paddocks will allow you to rotate the pigs frequently to minimize the damage and maximize the beneficial effects of the pigs. Trees don’t need nearly as much fertilization from the pigs as a grassland habitat might; this necessitates more frequent rotations.

The Benefits to Homesteaders and Farmers

By silvopasturing successfully, a farmer can spend less money on feed. Nuts and other hard mass have a high caloric value—and pigs love them! In many cases, they will prefer them over grain. In the springtime, pigs also can forage for grubs and other creepy crawlies. As an added bonus, the pigs will be granted natural shade in the summer months and protection from the elements throughout the winter. An overheated pig, in particular, won’t develop properly or eat as much, causing a drop in weight gain and feed conversion rates.

Pigs are also skilled at clearing land. Before the advent of the tractor, farmers had to rely on livestock to clear new pasture. Pigs remove the brush (even stumps) through their natural rooting process. Although pigs can be detrimental to a forest ecosystem, pulling bark off trees or rooting up valued tree species, they can successfully convert an ecosystem with proper care.

Place pigs in a paddock for several weeks, then throw down a perennial such as ryegrass. Leave the pigs for another week or so to cultivate the new growth. Then, rotate them out to another paddock while the new seeds take hold. Try not to paddock pigs where there are multiple young saplings of the desired type. Pigs—and tree growth—is better suited when trees are larger and have more developed roots. Depending on how much brush remains in an area, a pig can have a woodlot cleared so that very little remains besides trees in just a small amount of time.

This process allows you either to convert the woodlot you have into usable pasture, or improve the tree quality of a certain forested area. When given proper attention and cultivation, it serves the purpose of properly managing trees and livestock so that optimal production is achieved. Silvopasturing may not always be the right choice for your small family farm or homestead, but it’s certainly proving to be a viable, hot-button option for many local farmers.

Have you silvopastured? What advice would you add? Share your thoughts in the section below:

GMO Pigs Used to Grow Human Organs for Transplants

(The Real Agenda News) The cloning of these GMO pigs with all their allegedly inactivated endogenous retroviruses, investors say, solves the main stumbling block to use these animals as an organ source.

But we can trust? Would you use a heart grown inside a GMO pig? What could go wrong? A lot, actually.

Among the various possibilities that current biotechnology poses for making organs for transplants, there is one that – including transplant experts – consider especially viable in the short term: using pigs as organ incubators.

But the problem is not using a pig or a goat or a cow, as sources of organs. They have all been used in the past. They have all been experimented on before.

As humiliating as it may seem, the pig is one of the animals most similar to us, even in physiological and metabolic aspects of great complexity.

Although the news of using pigs as sources of organs for transplants has been presented as a breakthrough, we all know is not so simple as taking an organ from a pig and sewing it on a human. In fact, it is rather complex.

The news has been received warmly by the medical industry as the possibilities for financial gain go through the roof. The “discovery” has swept one of the main stumbling blocks toward that goal of enormous medical interest.

A consortium of North American and Chinese scientists has generated pigs completely free of endogenous retroviruses, they say, a type of virus whose DNA is integrated into dozens of animal genome sites and that can be activated by transplanting the organs into humans. That possibility would have disastrous consequences.

Endogenous retroviruses have disconcerted geneticists for decades. Our own genome is plagued with residues of ancient retroviruses, and some are still active and jumping from one place to another during our development.

Pigs have 62 endogenous retroviruses, and their genes are functional, allowing them to jump from one place to another when porcine cells are surrounded by human cells, as would happen in the case of a transplant. Its deactivation is therefore essential.

There remain other important pitfalls, especially those concerning tissue compatibility. But scientists feel so optimistic that they hope to resolve them within a year, and already plan some preliminary clinical trials.

Eliminating the 62 endogenous pig retroviruses was impossible until very recently, scientists involved in the experiments say.

The key, as in many other biological problems, has come from the CRISPR technique of genomic editing, which allows them to modify any piece of DNA at will.

These are the people playing God with the human genome, the kind of games seen in science fiction movies such as

Scientists assure us that they have inactivated an essential gene for all retroviruses, best known as POL, which makes the enzyme that replicates the genetic material of the virus and integrates it into the host’s genome.

With all the POL genes inactivated in the 62 pig retroviruses, these potential infectious agents are left without the cornerstone of their life cycle, and are converted into a mere fossil residue of the porcine genome, scientists say.

To appreciate the seriousness of their intentions, a fact is enough: the Chinese group WH, the largest pig breeder in the world, created a bioscience unit in April to generate pigs for transplants. Watson, I’ve told you to keep track of the money.

Since clinical trials have not begun, there is zero proof that scientists have been successful in the splicing of the genes and in inactivating the retroviruses, as they claim they have. But either way, will anyone seriously consider implanting an organ grown in a GMO pig whose retroviruses might jump into human genes?

Would you?

GMO Pigs Used to Grow Human Organs for Transplants

(The Real Agenda News) The cloning of these GMO pigs with all their allegedly inactivated endogenous retroviruses, investors say, solves the main stumbling block to use these animals as an organ source.

But we can trust? Would you use a heart grown inside a GMO pig? What could go wrong? A lot, actually.

Among the various possibilities that current biotechnology poses for making organs for transplants, there is one that – including transplant experts – consider especially viable in the short term: using pigs as organ incubators.

But the problem is not using a pig or a goat or a cow, as sources of organs. They have all been used in the past. They have all been experimented on before.

As humiliating as it may seem, the pig is one of the animals most similar to us, even in physiological and metabolic aspects of great complexity.

Although the news of using pigs as sources of organs for transplants has been presented as a breakthrough, we all know is not so simple as taking an organ from a pig and sewing it on a human. In fact, it is rather complex.

The news has been received warmly by the medical industry as the possibilities for financial gain go through the roof. The “discovery” has swept one of the main stumbling blocks toward that goal of enormous medical interest.

A consortium of North American and Chinese scientists has generated pigs completely free of endogenous retroviruses, they say, a type of virus whose DNA is integrated into dozens of animal genome sites and that can be activated by transplanting the organs into humans. That possibility would have disastrous consequences.

Endogenous retroviruses have disconcerted geneticists for decades. Our own genome is plagued with residues of ancient retroviruses, and some are still active and jumping from one place to another during our development.

Pigs have 62 endogenous retroviruses, and their genes are functional, allowing them to jump from one place to another when porcine cells are surrounded by human cells, as would happen in the case of a transplant. Its deactivation is therefore essential.

There remain other important pitfalls, especially those concerning tissue compatibility. But scientists feel so optimistic that they hope to resolve them within a year, and already plan some preliminary clinical trials.

Eliminating the 62 endogenous pig retroviruses was impossible until very recently, scientists involved in the experiments say.

The key, as in many other biological problems, has come from the CRISPR technique of genomic editing, which allows them to modify any piece of DNA at will.

These are the people playing God with the human genome, the kind of games seen in science fiction movies such as

Scientists assure us that they have inactivated an essential gene for all retroviruses, best known as POL, which makes the enzyme that replicates the genetic material of the virus and integrates it into the host’s genome.

With all the POL genes inactivated in the 62 pig retroviruses, these potential infectious agents are left without the cornerstone of their life cycle, and are converted into a mere fossil residue of the porcine genome, scientists say.

To appreciate the seriousness of their intentions, a fact is enough: the Chinese group WH, the largest pig breeder in the world, created a bioscience unit in April to generate pigs for transplants. Watson, I’ve told you to keep track of the money.

Since clinical trials have not begun, there is zero proof that scientists have been successful in the splicing of the genes and in inactivating the retroviruses, as they claim they have. But either way, will anyone seriously consider implanting an organ grown in a GMO pig whose retroviruses might jump into human genes?

Would you?

Hog Apocalypse: This State’s Gonna Kill 2.5 Million Pigs With Poison

Image source: Pixabay.com

A southwestern state is facing a feral hog apocalypse that threatens agriculture, and now the state’s agriculture commissioner thinks has an answer: poison.

Texas is being overrun by 2.5 million wild or feral hogs that cause at least $50 million a year in damage to agriculture, The Austin American Statesman reported. The hogs also destroy lawns, flower beds, vegetable gardens, livestock tanks and even Internet, television and phone cables.

Not even the killing of 750,000 wild pigs by hunters each year has been able to control the hog invasion. The hogs were brought to Texas centuries ago by Spanish pioneers who turned them loose to ensure a food supply.

The solution to the hog problem is a poison called Kaput Feral Hog Lure, Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller told the newspaper. The poison has a substance called warfarin, which acts as a blood thinner in humans. But it kills pigs.

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“This is going to be the hog apocalypse, if you like,” Miller told The American-Statesman. “If you want them gone, this will get them gone.”

The plan is to allow people to attract hogs with nontoxic food, and once the hogs keep coming back, replace the food with the poison.

One group not sold on Miller’s idea is the state’s hog hunters. They fear it will threaten their families and damage the environment.

“If this hog is poisoned, do I want to feed it to my family?” Eydin Hansen, the vice president of the Texas Hog Hunters Association, asked.

“If a hog dies, what eats it? Coyotes, buzzards…” Hansen told AP. “We’re gonna affect possibly the whole ecosystem.”

Some Texans use hog hunting to put food on the table.

“It’s a way to feed your family,” Hansen said.

Hogs who have eaten the poison have fat that is blue, Miller said.

Would you back a plan to kill hogs with poison? Share your thoughts in the section below:

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